<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Strong Earnings, Stealth Selloff
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;The stock market has been in a stealth selloff for the past few months,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s pro trader Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;Even while the major indexes were hitting new highs just a few weeks ago, the majority of stocks were actually moving lower.
&ldquo;Now this correction has begun to impact the larger indexes, despite strong earnings results from companies recently.
&ldquo;The latest example is Nvidia,&rdquo; he reminds.
&ldquo;Even though the company reported exemplary numbers on its earnings call last week, the stock ended the following day down 3.15%.
&ldquo;Nvidia&rsquo;s latest earnings report &mdash; as they all do &mdash; brought up speculation over the AI bubble.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;My view is that we absolutely are in a bubble. But the key is to understand what exactly a &lsquo;bubble&rsquo; means for stocks and how it plays out over time.&rdquo; 
&ldquo;Each time a revolutionary technology like AI comes along, we get extreme levels of investor enthusiasm with it.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s intense speculative activity with investors misallocating large amounts of their capital.
&ldquo;A lot of capital goes into companies that will never achieve any success,&rdquo; says Enrique. &ldquo;For a period of time, these are the best stocks in the entire market.
&ldquo;Unfortunately, most of these stocks will lead to steep losses. And in many cases, the shares will be worthless.
&ldquo;Is that what&rsquo;s happening right now? I don&rsquo;t think so&hellip; At least, not yet.
&ldquo;Especially not when you see the strong earnings like we saw this last quarter. Not just for Nvidia, but for a broad swath of companies.
&ldquo;Here are some charts from Bespoke Investment Group showing how this most recent quarter ranks relative to other quarters historically.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3S43C2WYBtJ2IXOJDus98H/75956e74398cfaf0396dfe70e3780483/fmf_enrique_chart.png" alt="Bespoke Investment Group charts" />
Q3 2025 was one of the strongest earnings seasons in recent years: By early November, nearly 90% of S&amp;P 500 companies beat profit estimates, more than 75% topped revenue forecasts and overall earnings grew about 13% year-over-year.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve invested professionally through bubbles before. I saw the 2008 crash coming. I wasn&rsquo;t surprised when the dot-com bubble burst,&rdquo; says Enrique.
&ldquo;And I can tell you this is not how the bubble bursts.&rdquo;
Even when it inevitably does, Enrique has a winning strategy:
&ldquo;First, we focus on buying real businesses that will succeed even if AI spending falls. They may not reach the same height of growth, but they will grow nevertheless.
&ldquo;Second, we are disciplined with our profit- and loss-taking. This allows us to make sure we keep our gains if the market heads for a lengthy pullback.
&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s my strongly held view that the current bull market has plenty of time left. It&rsquo;s not time to panic (yet).
&ldquo;That brings me to one last point,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;We have a rare opportunity to make a ton of money while the majority of investors sit on the sidelines.&rdquo;
[A chain reaction has begun on Wall Street, one that could send a whole series of stocks absolutely exploding over the next year.
&ldquo;And this Tuesday, Nov. 25 at 11 a.m. (ET), I&rsquo;m going to prove it to you,&rdquo; Enrique says.
<a href="https://signups.paradigm-press.info/2497036" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Click here to register for The Paradigm Alpha Summit on Tuesday.</a>
Your attendance at Tuesday&rsquo;s event is completely FREE. All you need to do is register with the link above to reserve your spot.
&ldquo;At the event, I&rsquo;ll reveal the name and ticker symbol of my #1 stock that I believe is set to explode by Dec. 2,&rdquo; Enrique adds, &ldquo;100% free, no credit card required.&rdquo;
Reserve your spot today!]
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Great Crypto Disconnect
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Crypto is sending mixed signals &mdash; record adoption, but painful price action. 
&ldquo;After 10 years in this space, I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve seen a disconnect this sharp,&rdquo; admits Paradigm&rsquo;s crypto expert Chris Campbell. &ldquo;Crypto got everything it wanted (and more)&hellip; and yet, it&rsquo;s never looked so dismal.&rdquo;
So what&rsquo;s really happening? Chris says the downturn &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t your average bear.&rdquo; Liquidity is tight, and &ldquo;when liquidity is low, crypto gets punched first.&rdquo; But there&rsquo;s more going on: &ldquo;By the looks of it, big players are being forced to sell, and they&rsquo;re doing it in the worst, most awkward way possible.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s like a couple of Goliaths are walking through a crowd of hobbits, shoving everyone around,&rdquo; he says. They&rsquo;re &ldquo;selling at the same time every day,&rdquo; seemingly without regard for price or news. The data, Chris says, &ldquo;fits the story of a forced liquidation.&rdquo;
Also, Japan may be an outsized part of the problem. &ldquo;Japan is being hit with a financial storm: interest rates jumped, the stock market fell fast and the yen lost value.&rdquo; Because Japan is a major global lender, &ldquo;trouble there quickly spreads everywhere else,&rdquo; pulling money out of riskier assets like crypto and tech.
Meanwhile, &ldquo;most asset managers have underperformed the market this year,&rdquo; forcing them to &ldquo;chase performance&rdquo; in tech and AI stocks &mdash; leaving crypto behind temporarily.
Still, blockchain activity tells a completely different story. Stablecoin volume has exploded &mdash; from $7.6T (2023) to over $18T (2024), with 2025 on pace to surpass that. DeFi and tokenized assets are booming. And users: &ldquo;100 million people used crypto in 2020&hellip; we&rsquo;ll hit 860 million this year.
&ldquo;Look, we get it,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The volatility is uncomfortable. It&rsquo;s annoying. But it&rsquo;s temporary.&rdquo;
His bottom line: &ldquo;Right now, James Altucher and I are buyers.&rdquo; Chris&rsquo;s advice is simple: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t overcommit. Don&rsquo;t use leverage. Dollar-cost average. Buy high-quality (Tier 1) assets.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Bitcoin&rsquo;s still sliding today &mdash; down 0.50% to $87,000. Ethereum, on the other hand, is retracing its steps: 0.70% to $2,850. 
As for the major U.S. stock indexes, they&rsquo;re all in the green at the time of writing. The tech-driven Nasdaq, in particular, is up 2.30% to 22,795 while the S&amp;P 500 is up 1.35% to 6,690. The Big Board, meanwhile, is up 0.60% to 46,515.
Notably, Google&rsquo;s parent company Alphabet is approaching a $4 trillion market value, set to become the third U.S. company to reach that milestone.
Shares jumped more than 5% today to a record $315.90, bringing its valuation to $3.82 trillion &mdash; up about 70% this year and outpacing other Mag 7 rivals, including Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Apple.
Alphabet regained momentum via its new AI model Gemini 3 &mdash; as well as Berkshire Hathaway&rsquo;s $4.3 billion investment in Q3. The company likewise weathered antitrust scrutiny, avoiding a court-ordered breakup (despite being found to hold an illegal search-engine monopoly).
Still, Alphabet&rsquo;s rapid rise has sparked debate over inflated tech valuations and potential echoes of the dot-com bubble. Analysts, however, see its vast cash flow, custom AI chips and dominant search business as strong advantages in the ongoing AI race.
Finally, checking on commodities, crude is up 0.60% to $58.40 for a barrel of WTI. Precious metals? Gold is up 0.30% to $4,091.50 per ounce, and silver is up 0.50% to $50.15.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Data Centers Freeze the Grid?
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The rapid expansion of data centers is more than just a tech boom &mdash; it&rsquo;s raising the stakes for all of us when winter hits. 
The Lone Star State, for one, is drawing massive data-center requests thanks to abundant renewable energy, plentiful natural gas and a business-friendly climate.
OpenAI is developing, for instance, its flagship &ldquo;Stargate&rdquo; campus in Abilene, Texas, with a planned power draw of 1.2 gigawatts &mdash; roughly the output of a large nuclear plant.
Meanwhile, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) flagged the grid-impact risk of data centers operating 24/7:
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Strong load growth from new data centers and other large industrial end users is driving higher winter electricity demand forecasts and contributing to continued risk of supply shortfalls.&rdquo;</li>
</ul>
That&rsquo;s not a theoretical worry. Remember Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, when freezing temperatures triggered simultaneous surges in heating demand and massive power-plant failures? In Texas, more than 4.5 million people lost power for several days.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now add relentless data-center demand into the mix &mdash; and you get a grid that might buckle under extreme winter conditions. 
In the region managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) &mdash; which covers about 90% of the state&rsquo;s electric load, including major cities such as Dallas&ndash;Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin &mdash; large-load interconnection requests have surged past 200 gigawatts. Roughly 70% of those requests are tied to data centers, according to ERCOT filings.
And per NERC&rsquo;s 2025&ndash;26 assessment, &ldquo;Winter electricity demand is rising at the fastest rate in recent years, particularly in areas where data center development is occurring.&rdquo;
What this means for you: Even though the grid is rated reliable under ordinary conditions, the real risk emerges during a week-long deep freeze &mdash; with plants offline, gas supply constrained, batteries depleted and lighting up server racks instead of homes.
You might think &ldquo;data centers don&rsquo;t affect me,&rdquo; but when they pull gigawatts and stretch supply, you face the same blackout risk Texas lived through.
&ldquo;Power shortfalls and rolling outages really could happen [in] certain regions&rdquo; of the U.S., warns Rob Gramlich of Grid Strategies. &ldquo;Those are unacceptable to everybody in the United States.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Gold Standard of Transparency
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has introduced the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2025, a push to conduct the first full audit of America&rsquo;s gold reserves in more than half a century.
The House bill (H.R. 3795) was introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on June 6; Sen. Lee announced the Senate companion last week.
According to Lee, &ldquo;Americans should know whether their literal national treasure is safe and accurately accounted for. That means passing the Gold Reserve Transparency Act, opening Fort Knox, U.S. Mint Facilities and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to an audit, and then making the results public.&rdquo;
The Senate bill lays out a sweeping mandate: Within nine months of enactment, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) must hire a qualified external auditor to perform a full assay, inventory and audit of all U.S.-owned gold reserves &mdash; including deep storage &mdash; assess physical security measures and account for any encumbrances (leases, swaps) or purchases/sales over the past 50 years.
Reports would then be submitted to Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury and published in full, with only security-sensitive details redacted.
&ldquo;The Federal Reserve and Treasury should not be permitted to operate in secrecy, especially when it comes to the most important monetary asset on the planet, i.e. gold,&rdquo; says former Congressman Ron Paul.
&ldquo;Restoring trust as to America&rsquo;s gold-holdings is more important than ever when foreign central banks are scrambling to stockpile gold at incredible rates.&rdquo;
No scheduled vote is on either chamber&rsquo;s calendar yet. We&rsquo;ll keep you posted.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Inflation Takes a Holiday (Allegedly)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If the American Farm Bureau Federation&rsquo;s (AFBF) Thanksgiving grocery tally for 2025 sounds like a fantasy, you&rsquo;re not alone.
Since 1986, the Farm Bureau has tracked the cost of a &ldquo;classic&rdquo; Thanksgiving meal for 10 &mdash; turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.
This year&rsquo;s total: $55.18.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3JbQxDwMxKHX3Z8aFZ1ElZ/919ce809255821e2a575e6dea2ed91ab/fmf_2025_tday_dinner.jpg" alt="2025 Thanksgiving Dinner" />
Courtesy: American Farm Bureau Federation
That&rsquo;s down 5% from 2024 and the lowest average since 2021, according to the AFBF&rsquo;s annual survey.
The biggest bargain? The bird itself. A 16-pound frozen turkey comes in around $21.50, more than 16% cheaper than last year. That&rsquo;s a welcome shift after two years of elevated prices from avian flu and feed costs. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s encouraging to see some relief in the price of turkeys, as it is typically the most expensive part of the meal,&rdquo; says AFBF economist Faith Parum.
Dinner rolls and stuffing also eased in price. But the humble veggie tray is up 61%, and sweet potatoes have jumped 37% &mdash; thanks to hurricane damage in North Carolina (the country&rsquo;s top sweet-potato producer).
Across U.S. regions, the South remains the cheapest place to feast ($50.01), while the West once again claims the priciest spread ($61.75).
Leftovers? Maybe. Liquor? Not included &mdash; and if history&rsquo;s any guide, it might cost more than the turkey itself.
Still, even as prices wobble from year to year, there&rsquo;s one constant worth remembering: However much the dinner costs, the chance to gather is, as they say&hellip; priceless.

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mobile masthead 5MIN

Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets is a daily e-letter covering the economy and the markets, reaching 120,000 paying subscribers of the renowned financial publishing firm Paradigm Press.

Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

The NVDA Trap

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />The Day After the &ldquo;Whoosh&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Yesterday&rsquo;s action in the stock market was something that normie Americans barely noticed.
A 1.6% drop in the benchmark S&amp;P 500? Not pleasant, but also nothing out of the ordinary.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But finance pros are agog at what happened.
If you were with us yesterday, you&rsquo;ll recall the major averages &ldquo;gapped&rdquo; higher on the heels of Nvidia&rsquo;s stellar earnings numbers &mdash; leaping big-time relative to Wednesday afternoon&rsquo;s close.
But by the time we hit &ldquo;send,&rdquo; the air was already coming out. At day&rsquo;s end, the market was deep in the red.
&ldquo;It was only the THIRD TIME since 1957 that the S&amp;P 500 gapped up more than +1.4% and then closed negative,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
And the only other times were very recent &mdash; amid COVID in April 2020 and the tariff scare in April of this year.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Which is all interesting, for sure. But how useful is it?
The great thing about working with Enrique is that he digs into data sources that mine actionable information from otherwise silly factoids.
So according to Subu Trade, here&rsquo;s what happened those other two times the S&amp;P gapped up over 1.4% and ended the day in the red: Both times the market was in the green the next day&hellip; the next week&hellip; and the next month.
You can make it out easily on this long-term chart of the S&amp;P&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5URNa3A6zVFIrsIBRqmhqf/83b04ad41bf7b9d83b454ff90ec52e6a/5Bullets_Chart_112125.png" alt="Only Three Times Since 1957" />
In 2020, the S&amp;P was up 8.3% a month after the &ldquo;gap and crap&rdquo; day&hellip; and earlier this year the one-month gain was an even more impressive 13.7%.
Here are some more numbers to geek out on: &ldquo;It was only the FOURTH TIME we have seen the S&amp;P 500 gap up more than 1.4% and then close down more than 1.5%,&rdquo; Enrique tells us.
What happened after that? According to figures from TheMarketStats, in each instance the market was up a week later. And on two of those three occasions &mdash; October 2008 and April 2025 &mdash; it was up one month later.
&ldquo;Ask yourself,&rdquo; Enrique urges: &ldquo;Is the current environment more like six months ago or more like when Lehman went bankrupt and housing was collapsing?
&ldquo;THAT answer will tell you what to do next. We think it is obvious &mdash; 2025! That means BUY THE DIP!&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Sure enough, Mr. Market is staging a rebound going into the weekend.
At last check, the S&amp;P 500 is up three quarters of a percent to 6,588. For the record, yesterday&rsquo;s action finally delivered a 5% pullback from all-time highs for the first time since April. Reminder: A 5% pullback is normal!
Relative to the S&amp;P the Nasdaq&rsquo;s gain today is weaker, the Dow&rsquo;s stronger.
Gold is holding its own at $4,078 but the action in silver has been wild &mdash; plunging to $48.60 at one point, but now back within a few pennies of $50. Crude has sunk 2% &mdash; a barrel of West Texas Intermediate back under $58 for the first time in a month.
Ugly doesn&rsquo;t even begin to describe the action in crypto &mdash; Bitcoin approaching $83,000 for the first time since April and Ethereum just over $2,700.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />Follow-Ups
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The Trump administration&rsquo;s latest foray into the energy-and-critical-minerals space is a $1 billion federal loan to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Of course, Three Mile Island was the site of an infamous accident in 1979. But only one of the reactors was damaged. The other remained in operation until 2019, when it was mothballed.
Last year, Constellation Energy (CEG) struck a deal with Microsoft: The undamaged reactor would be restarted, providing electricity exclusively to Microsoft data centers for 20 years beginning in 2027.
The Energy Department says Constellation could follow through on its contract without a federal loan &mdash; but the taxpayer backstop would help lower electricity prices for customers on the PJM Interconnection. That&rsquo;s the country&rsquo;s biggest grid operator, serving 65 million people in 13 states.
&ldquo;What&rsquo;s important for the administration is to show support for affordable, reliable, secure energy in the U.S.,&rdquo; says Energy Department senior adviser Greg Beard. &ldquo;This loan to Constellation will lower the cost of capital and make power cheaper for those PJM ratepayers.&rdquo;
Gee &mdash; are homeowners going to see an itemized discount on their electric bill? Just asking!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The drama over the Chinese-owned chip maker Nexperia is over &mdash; and it&rsquo;s not an overstatement to say it&rsquo;s ended in humiliation for the West.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ground-zero-of-techs-cold-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">As we chronicled last month</a>, the Dutch government nationalized Nexperia&rsquo;s operations there &mdash; under considerable pressure from Washington.
But because 80% of Nexperia&rsquo;s Dutch product is sent to China for packaging and testing, Beijing had ample leverage &mdash; which it exercised by barring exports of the firm&rsquo;s product from China. Volkswagen and Volvo, among others, were at risk of shutting down their assembly lines for lack of chips.
On Wednesday the Dutch government said it would suspend its decision after &ldquo;constructive talks&rdquo; with Beijing. For all intents and purposes, the government un-seized Nexperia and returned control to its Chinese owner.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />D.C. Won&rsquo;t Take Yes for an Answer (Venezuela)
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;U.S. Military Aircraft Confirmed to Have Flown Near Venezuela,&rdquo; says a BBC headline.
Relying on flight-tracking data, the Beeb reports that four U.S. military aircraft buzzed the Venezuelan coast last night. &ldquo;These include a long-range bomber, a surveillance aircraft, a fighter jet and a refueling tanker.&rdquo; The aircraft belong to a huge naval and aircraft fleet massed off Venezuela, led by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford.
&ldquo;I do not believe the U.S. can sustain this magnitude of force projection at a high state of readiness for more than a few days,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst William Schryver. &ldquo;They either have to start the party or turn out the lights and go home.&rdquo;
As we chronicled <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a>, the drug trade is merely a pretext for war. If war comes &mdash; and that is still far from certain &mdash; it will be at the behest of powerful special interests that stand to profit from a successful regime change.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The peculiar thing is that Venezuela&rsquo;s President Nicolas Maduro has already offered Washington access to his country&rsquo;s vast natural resources, in hopes of avoiding war.
Last month, The New York Times reported that Venezuelan officials &ldquo;offered the Trump administration a dominant stake in Venezuela&rsquo;s oil and other mineral wealth in discussions that lasted for months, according to multiple people close to the talks&hellip;
&ldquo;Under a deal discussed between a senior U.S. official and Mr. Maduro&rsquo;s top aides, the Venezuelan strongman offered to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, give preferential contracts to American businesses, reverse the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States and slash his country&rsquo;s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.&rdquo;
Maduro&rsquo;s government has also continued accepting U.S. deportation flights &mdash; by one count, more than 10,000 Venezuelans since February.
And yet it seems the Trump administration refuses to take yes for an answer. It cut off all talks in early October.
Shades of the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002&ndash;03: After the war was underway we <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/worldspecial/baghdad-scrambled-to-offer-deal-to-us-as-war.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">learned</a> Saddam Hussein was willing to give the Bush administration essentially everything it wanted &mdash; everything except giving up power.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If war does not come, it will be because the Trump administration feels it lacks the consent of the governed in this country.
On that score, Reuters/Ipsos finds only 21% of Americans support using the U.S. military to oust Maduro. An earlier survey by YouGov came up with a similar number &mdash; 18%.
On a related question leaving Maduro out of the equation &mdash; &ldquo;Would you support or oppose the U.S. using military force to invade Venezuela?&rdquo; &mdash; a majority of respondents to the YouGov survey said they&rsquo;re opposed (55%), including a plurality of Republicans (38%).
Incredibly, support among Republicans for sending Navy ships to the waters around Venezuela declined between September and October.
The America First faction of Trump&rsquo;s base &mdash; already angry about his support for Israel and his flip-flops on Ukraine &mdash; wants nothing to do with it. And they&rsquo;re posting memes like this, harking back to early 2003&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/20UjzRgjg3DvV3kOo5D45s/1c865c0acea41bc7a34bdd26f2045b4a/maga_meme.jpg" alt="Meme" />
And so the U.S. armada sits off Venezuela, planes buzzing the coast.
&ldquo;I believe they may be attempting to goad the Venezuelans into firing on them in order to establish a &lsquo;they struck first&rsquo; pretext to then unleash a massive attack,&rdquo; says the aforementioned William Schryver.
&ldquo;I doubt the Venezuelans will oblige them, and sooner or later the U.S. will have to do &lsquo;something,&rsquo; or call the whole thing off.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Gee, what was it we were saying in <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/in-ai-we-trust">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a> about how the mainstream still doesn&rsquo;t &ldquo;get&rdquo; gold?
But the meme-o-sphere does get it&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/knn1O0fsbr1uiynIZfvPF/ba6184b3576f4ef053b9be04f6354d4c/apes_meme.png" alt="Meme" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Venezuela
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;Well said on Venezuela,&rdquo; a longtime reader writes after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tuesday&rsquo;s edition</a> &mdash; which appears to be the most &ldquo;liked&rdquo; issue we&rsquo;ve published in quite some time.
&ldquo;Hard to tame that imperial impulse,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;How did &lsquo;our oil&rsquo; get under their landmass anyway?&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />But I&rsquo;d rather give space to some other perspectives &mdash; including one from a longtime reader who lives in nearby Ecuador.
His note is too long to publish in full but he reminds us about the socialist mismanagement of Maduro and his predecessor Chavez.
Ecuador was flooded with refugees amid a wave of runaway inflation starting around 2016&ndash;17. &ldquo;I recall refugees offering notes of 10,000 or 20,000 bolivares at traffic lights for any small change you cared to offer them. I have several I collected that way as souvenirs.&rdquo; Our reader also knew a successful businessman who fled Venezuela as the regime blamed &ldquo;greedy business owners&rdquo; for its travails.
&ldquo;It is absolutely true that Latin American governments do NOT like it when the U.S. tries to engineer regime changes anywhere south of the U.S. border, but while the protests would probably be loud should the U.S. try to overthrow Maduro et al., if the result were to be a Venezuela that was stable and safe, most Venezuelan refugees that I know would really prefer to return home, and the countries where they are now residing would be relieved to see them go.
&ldquo;I do not share all this to advocate any particular position, but so that your readers may have a little better understanding of the situation. The refugees I have known personally are generally good people, struggling to survive when their lives were thrown into turmoil that most of us cannot comprehend.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now a more forceful reply: &ldquo;Wow, while I do agree with you most of the time, your commentary about Venezuela looks like something I would see on WaPo or CNBC. 
&ldquo;In time, we might be able to compare Venezuela with Iraq, but certainly not at this point. And how can you be so sure this is not about drugs? Are you getting intelligence briefings (pretty sure you're not)?
&ldquo;But you are willing to take the word of a DEI liberal activist like Ms. Kwiatkowski (who also doesn't know anything). Could there be something else of vital importance happening there? The truth is you don't know, and so you should not act like you do know.
&ldquo;Perhaps you are like many of the Demoncrats, apparently screaming about having their supply of cheap cocaine cut off? One has to wonder about the motives of someone so opposed to cutting off the supply of drugs to the U.S.&rdquo;
Dave: My default position is to never trust the claims of government officials without evidence.
And no, it is not too soon to seek analogies to Iraq.
Retired Rep. John Duncan (R-Tennessee) was one of only six Republicans who voted against authorizing the Iraq War. &ldquo;At the time,&rdquo; he writes in the Miami Herald, &ldquo;it was the most unpopular vote of my 30-year congressional career. But it has come to be my most celebrated&hellip;
&ldquo;We now have decades of accumulated wisdom that misguided military ventures, be they outright invasions like Iraq or hybrid regime change wars like in Libya, only lead to catastrophe. I was one of the first Republicans in Congress to endorse Donald Trump for president in 2016 because he appeared to have learned these lessons.&rdquo;
But Duncan is deeply concerned now.
&ldquo;Unlike in 2002, the blowback of regime change in Venezuela would be in America&rsquo;s own backyard. Ironically, a destabilized Venezuela would create the perfect conditions for the very organized criminal and narco-trafficking activities that the Trump administration seeks to combat. It could also trigger a new wave of Venezuelan migration.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll leave it there for the week. More about the potential fallout from a regime-change op next week.

fmf hero 112125

Only 3X in Market History… 

FMF-Issue-11-20-25(featured)

In AI We Trust

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Fear vs. Reality
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Rarely has the stock market staged a rebound as strong as the one since last Friday&hellip; and at the same time, investor sentiment has remained this gloomy.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/181B46fG5keHb5y4y6NjjI/d6aa03ccdae0b49eafd6bb4b6758d915/cnn_fear_greed.png" alt="fear and greed index" />
In recent years, CNN has published a &ldquo;Fear &amp; Greed Index&rdquo; comprising seven market indicators &ndash; everything from momentum to breadth to options activity. Ranked on a scale of 1-100, anything under 25 is considered &ldquo;Extreme Fear.&rdquo; And that&rsquo;s where the index has sat for nearly two weeks now.
&ldquo;Sheer, unadulterated terror is gripping the average investor so tightly that they've parked a staggering $7.39 trillion in money market funds,&rdquo; observes Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />And yet&hellip; as Thanksgiving weekend approaches, the S&amp;P 500 is up another 0.9% today at 6,826 &ndash; only 0.9% off its all-time closing high less than a month ago.
For whatever reason, sentiment is in the toilet amid a 5% pullback earlier this month &ndash; a totally normal occurrence, we&rsquo;ll remind you.
Whether the buzz is about an AI bubble or Federal Reserve policy, the reasons don&rsquo;t matter. Not if you&rsquo;re serious about making money.
&ldquo;This is the moment when fear and reality have completely diverged, creating an opportunity for those willing to see what's actually happening beneath the noise,&rdquo; Enrique says.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Beneath the noise, &ldquo;Corporate America delivered a powerhouse Q3 2025 earnings season,&rdquo; says Enrique.
&ldquo;The S&amp;P 500 achieved a blended year-over-year earnings growth rate of 13.1% &mdash; and an astonishing 82% of companies beat their earnings-per-share estimates.&rdquo;
Across decades of market history, that&rsquo;s a top-10% performance.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />&ldquo;This recent selloff reminds me of two previous pullbacks we have seen in the last 18 months,&rdquo; Enrique continues.
&ldquo;Most folks will think of the massive &lsquo;Trump Tariff Tantrum&rsquo; in April. But I think the better analogies are the selloffs in August 2024 and January 2025.&rdquo;
Here&rsquo;s a Bloomberg chart of the S&amp;P 500 going back to mid-2024. Note the two red lines Enrique has added here.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5c0whZUniuURqymP4c2QBg/da6e3901f6045803b73ff258ac50f25c/sp500_chart.png" alt="S&amp;P 500" />
In the summer of 2024, there was a freakout over the future of the &ldquo;yen carry trade&rdquo; &ndash; in which deep-pocketed investors around the world borrowed Japanese yen at next to no cost and invested in a host of assets all over the world that could generate a respectable return.
&ldquo;This steep move lower was centered around the very best stocks in the stock market,&rdquo; Enrique recalls &ndash; and as you can see, it had no staying power.
Then in early 2025 came the freakout over the Chinese AI engine DeepSeek. (Remember that?) In a single day, Enrique urged his premium subscribers to lay on three positions that all rose by double-digits in three weeks as the market staged a comeback (however brief it turned out to be).
Given the backdrop of strong corporate earnings &ndash; and a president who&rsquo;s keen to boost his party&rsquo;s chances in the midterm elections &ndash; &ldquo;I think that right now we are on the verge of ANOTHER one of these moments,&rdquo; says Enrique.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Before we move on to other matters, a quick pulse of assets apart from stocks&hellip;
Gold is looking strong, up $38 to $4,157. Silver is looking stronger, up $1.49 and only a dime away from $53. (And the mining stocks are stout too, the HUI index up 3.7% to 656.)
Elsewhere in the commodity complex, crude languishes at $58.15. Going into the holiday weekend, the national average gasoline price is a nickel less than it was a week ago.
Crypto is showing signs of life again with Bitcoin less than $800 away from the $90,000 mark and Ethereum back over $3,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />As AI Goes, So Goes the Economy
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />You heard it here first: AI is the only thing propping up the U.S. economy.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/without-ai-the-economy-is-toast" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Last month</a>, we showed you how two economists &ndash; working independently &ndash; reached that conclusion. And <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/in-ai-we-trust" target="_blank" rel="noopener">last week</a>, we showed you how the AI economy was decoupling from the &ldquo;real economy&rdquo; of retailing, freight hauling, etc.
Now the proposition has gone mainstream: &ldquo;Economy Is Now Addicted to AI Spending,&rdquo; screamed the front page of yesterday&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal.
&ldquo;The turbulence that hit stocks tied to artificial intelligence last week highlights a broader risk to the economy,&rdquo; the article began. &ldquo;Growth has become so dependent on AI-related investment and wealth that if the boom turns to bust, it could take the broader economy with it.
&ldquo;Business investment in AI might have accounted for as much as half of the growth in gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, in the first six months of the year. Rising AI stocks are also boosting household wealth, leading to more consumer spending, especially in recent months.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Now that The Wall Street Journal is noticing, so is the White House.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/348aaYJIN5ZV0fSfapuJEN/7df5e5a887f7c86de4a3f456b11b70c4/sacks_tweet.png" alt="david sacks tweet" />
That&rsquo;s David Sacks, the venture capital guy who&rsquo;s now Donald Trump&rsquo;s AI and crypto czar.
The social media reaction has been&hellip; interesting. &ldquo;AI czar setting up likely government support narrative,&rdquo; tweets Edward Dowd, a former BlackRock manager who&rsquo;s acquired a following as a financial renegade.
&ldquo;Basically the economy is so hollowed out that the only game in town is the race to build the digital gulag. Good times.&rdquo;
Sacks was compelled to reply &ndash; reminding us of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/no-bailout-for-you-openai" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the &ldquo;no bailouts&rdquo; promise he made</a> earlier this month after OpenAI was proposing taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to finance its expansion.
&ldquo;Puzzled that anyone could interpret [my] post as supporting a bailout. I&rsquo;ve already opposed that. Nor do I believe one is needed.&rdquo;
We&rsquo;ll take Sacks at his word today. Then again, we remember government officials and bankers in 2007 and 2008 saying the banks would never need any taxpayer help&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Lights Out
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />If the power grid runs into trouble this winter, it won&rsquo;t necessarily be in the usual places.
The North American Electricity Reliability Corporation is out with its annual &ldquo;Winter Reliability Assessment.&rdquo;
The good news is that despite the lack of investment in the power grid&hellip; and the skyrocketing demands that AI is placing on the grid&hellip; every region of North America is in good shape assuming there&rsquo;s no heavy-duty winter weather.
But in the event of &ldquo;more extreme winter conditions extending over a wide area,&rdquo; NERC&rsquo;s report warns of &ldquo;electricity supply shortfalls.&rdquo;
Last winter, the risks were spread across a large swath of the country extending from the Dakotas down to Texas, and from the Great Lakes to the mid-Atlantic. As a polar vortex approached the eastern U.S. at the start of 2025, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ai-shows-its-work#polar" target="_blank" rel="noopener">we chronicled</a> how NERC warned of widespread outages if regional grid operators didn&rsquo;t take preventive steps. (Fortunately, they did.)
Most of last year&rsquo;s potential trouble spots are in the clear this year &ndash; except for Texas, where we spotlighted the risks <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-nvda-trap" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Monday&rsquo;s edition</a> of 5 Bullets. Elsewhere, the risk is elevated in New England, the Carolinas and the Pacific Northwest.
Here is NERC&rsquo;s map spotlighting the regional grid operators potentially at risk during an extreme cold snap&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7iiz1Ga5gDCuOZoa0aOt3f/e922b238e1df25a860cecbec71ce2da6/weather_risk.png" alt="weather risk map" />
New England is at additional risk from depleted stockpiles of natural gas. That is, even if the grid itself can keep up with demand, there might not be enough gas on hand to feed the grid.
We&rsquo;ve been warning regularly since mid-2022 that the steady closings of coal-fired and nuclear power plants were putting the grid at risk. And we amplified those warnings starting in early 2024 as AI data centers put additional demands on the grid.
This year, Paradigm readers started reaping the profits from this phenomenon as share prices of &ldquo;independent power producers&rdquo; that aren&rsquo;t regulated utilities began to soar. On May 7, we offered a rare free pick in 5 Bullets &ndash; Constellation Energy &ndash; which is up 34% since. Meanwhile, Enrique Abeyta pinpointed a special trade for his paid readers, garnering 177% on Talen Energy.
As you can see, the risks haven&rsquo;t gone away &ndash; and neither have the profit opportunities. Stay tuned in 2026.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />DOGE, We Hardly Knew Ye
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />The federal agency DOGE is officially no more. You could make a strong case that it was never real to begin with.
As you might recall, back when Elon Musk was Donald Trump&rsquo;s chief campaign surrogate last year, Musk volunteered himself to run a &ldquo;Department of Government Efficiency.&rdquo;
A couple of weeks before Election Day, he told a Trump rally, &ldquo;I think we can reduce the annual federal budget by at least $2 trillion per year.&rdquo;
Literally a year ago today, <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/buy-sell-hold/#4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">your editor was already warning</a> there might be less to DOGE than met the eye.
Then, even before Trump returned to office. Musk dialed back his ambitions from $2 trillion to $1 trillion. By April, the number was down to a mere $150 billion. Amid his falling-out with Trump, Musk relinquished his White House duties at the end of May.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />Asked about DOGE&rsquo;s status earlier this month, White House Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor said, &ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t exist.&rdquo; It is no longer a &ldquo;centralized entity,&rdquo; he told the Reuters newswire.
Kinda premature, no? As a reminder, DOGE&rsquo;s mandate to slash away at the size of government extended through July 4 of next year &ndash; a symbolic deadline coinciding with the nation&rsquo;s 250th birthday.
Whatever meager savings DOGE achieved have been more than offset by brand-new boondoggles. <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/without-ai-the-economy-is-toast/#3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">As documented</a> in this e-letter last month, Uncle Sam&rsquo;s spending grew 3.9% from fiscal year 2024 to fiscal year 2025. Spending fell microscopically during the first eight full months of the Trump administration &ndash; but only because of some accounting gimmicks with the student loan program.
Meanwhile in October &ndash; the first month of fiscal year 2026 &ndash; federal spending totaled $689 billion, up a staggering 18% from October 2024.
That&rsquo;s despite a &ldquo;partial government shutdown&rdquo; last month&hellip; and a Biden administration that was spending like mad a year earlier to boost Kamala Harris&rsquo; election chances.
No wonder gold is holding up so well after its recent downdraft. It&rsquo;s the ultimate refuge from the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasuries&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: The Tradition Continues
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" />About the American Farm Bureau Federation&rsquo;s cost estimate of Thanksgiving dinner &ndash; spotlighted <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-nvda-trap" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in Monday&rsquo;s edition</a> &ndash; a reader writes&hellip;
&ldquo;I can say for one that my cost for feeding 10 people in the beautiful state of California is a lot higher than the estimated amount of $55.18.&nbsp;
&ldquo;My Thanksgiving costs including a Butterball turkey and all of the trimming was $186.12 for the estimated 10 that will be at our home this week. I can tell you this amount does not include any alcohol or drinks for the family either as I purchased those items at Costco as they are much cheaper there than at Vons grocery store where I purchased our items.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I honestly do not know where these folks got their amount from. Did they include the actual prices from the &lsquo;Golden State?&rsquo;
&ldquo;I had to comment on this because this is the second time I saw the comment about how much people are paying for the items to make a Thanksgiving dinner and they were so far off I felt my comments were necessary. I will have to manage our grocery bills for the next month much closer because of the higher costs. Things are still just too expensive.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Thanks for reading my ramble!&rdquo;
Dave responds: You&rsquo;re now part of a time-honored tradition in these digital pages &ndash; ragging on the Farm Bureau for its perpetually lowball estimate, no doubt skewed by factory-farmed turkey, store-bought pie crust, etc.
Or as a reader said way back in 2016, &ldquo;a Monsanto-laced GMO special Thanksgiving dinner that glows under a blacklight.&rdquo;
Ah well. However much your feast ends up costing, we hope you spend it among people whose company you treasure&hellip; that you have much to be thankful for&hellip; and that the investment guidance we furnish at Paradigm Press contributed some small part to your blessings in 2025.

fmf hero 112625

Fear vs. Reality

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Unfinished Business
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> It&rsquo;s not too soon to start thinking ahead to 2026. But to think clearly, you have to first contend with unfinished business from 2025.
This year, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve watched companies tied to big themes like AI, quantum computing and nuclear soar earlier in the year and then pull back,&rdquo; says Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta.
&ldquo;That mix of big winners and sudden losers gives you the chance to clean things up and set yourself up for next year.&rdquo;
Maybe you booked some large &mdash; and taxable &mdash; gains earlier in the year. And maybe you&rsquo;re also sitting on some paper losses.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;This is the perfect time to realize some of those losses and help offset some of those big gains,&rdquo; Enrique ventures.
Just make sure you don&rsquo;t run afoul of the IRS&rsquo; rule governing &ldquo;wash sales.&rdquo; You have to wait at least 30 days after selling a stock before you buy it back.
Not only that, the IRS also watches out for whether you bought a &ldquo;substantially identical&rdquo; position.
&ldquo;This prevents you from taking profits in a stock and simply replacing it with an option on the same stock,&rdquo; Enrique explains. &ldquo;The rules are quite clear that the loss would not be allowed.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;But what about when different stocks trade similarly?&rdquo; Enrique goes on. &ldquo;Take the quantum computing industry, for example.
&ldquo;There are a number of stocks like IonQ Inc. (IONQ), D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), Rigetti Computing (RGTI) and Quantum Computing (QUBT). Even though they are very different companies, they are all in the same industry. So the stocks trade similarly.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing stopping you from taking a loss in a stock in this group that you bought recently and using the proceeds to buy back another stock in that industry.&rdquo;
As always, consult a tax professional before making any moves. We&rsquo;re just laying out the big picture.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Another move you can make: Take advantage of the recent sell-off to buy quality stocks at a relative bargain price.
Case in point: Facebook parent Meta Platforms. META &ldquo;reported awesome results at the end of October,&rdquo; Enrique says &mdash; &ldquo;yet the stock is down almost 20% from when it reported.
&ldquo;This is one of the best stocks of all time, and the company is crushing results. Why not take some of your losses and rotate the capital into a long-term winner that&rsquo;s trading at a great price?
&ldquo;There are other examples out there, but I think this is the best one.&rdquo;
<ul>
<li>Another plus for META: Yesterday a federal judge dismissed the Federal Trade Commission&rsquo;s antitrust complaint against Meta &mdash; which accused the company of building an illegal monopoly in social media via its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The feds might appeal, but it would be an uphill climb.</li>
</ul>
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> At the same time, &ldquo;Beware selling an otherwise good company into the year-end tax-loss retreat just because there&rsquo;s a year-end tax-loss retreat,&rdquo; counsels our Byron King.
Byron is Paradigm&rsquo;s mining-and-energy authority, and he&rsquo;s thinking about many of the gold-mining shares that rallied spectacularly this year &mdash; only to pull back in recent weeks.
&ldquo;Think ahead to early 2026, when good companies will find new buyers. Those currently &lsquo;down&rsquo; shares &mdash; especially some of the solid mining plays that are off their 2025 highs &mdash; may have strong uplift in them come 2026.
&ldquo;Along these last lines, you might consider deploying some cash in, say, early December to go bargain hunting among good names; or at least be prepared to pick up shares at a discount come early January.&rdquo;
Byron expands on these thoughts &mdash; and submits a lengthy list of buys for your consideration &mdash; over at our sister e-letter The Daily Reckoning. <a href="https://dailyreckoning.com/end-of-the-year-lets-look-at-taxes-metals-and-energy/">Worth a look</a>.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" /> NVDA Watch
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the same way the U.S. stock market marks time ahead of a Federal Reserve announcement, the market is treading water today ahead of Nvidia earnings.
NVDA reports after the closing bell. In the meantime, the S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq are staging oversold bounces &mdash; the S&amp;P up about a quarter percent to 6,635 and the Nasdaq up a half-percent at 22,559.
You don&rsquo;t have to look hard to find buzz that NVDA is overvalued. But Davis Wilson from our sister e-letter The Million Mission isn&rsquo;t buying it.
&ldquo;Nvidia trades at 50X trailing earnings &mdash; one of the lowest multiples this company has had in years. On next year&rsquo;s earnings, NVDA trades at just 27X, putting it right in line with companies like Starbucks, Mastercard, Hershey and TJX.
&ldquo;But here&rsquo;s the kicker: Earnings estimates keep rising.
&ldquo;Just 90 days ago, Wall Street expected Nvidia to earn $5.90. Today that estimate is up to $6.83. And these estimates tick higher every day. This is the exact setup I love: A stock drifting lower while earnings move sharply higher.
&ldquo;That gap always closes&hellip; And it usually closes to the upside.&rdquo;
Meanwhile, the hyperscalers &mdash; the Googles, Microsofts and Amazons of the world that buy NVDA chips &mdash; are accelerating plans to keep giving NVDA their business.
So what&rsquo;s to make of the fact NVDA&rsquo;s share price has fallen from $210 to $181? &ldquo;Stocks sometimes fall simply because sentiment weakens,&rdquo; says Davis &mdash; &ldquo;not because fundamentals deteriorate&hellip; The stock price has moved lower. The business hasn&rsquo;t.
&ldquo;Earnings tonight may add volatility, but the long-term direction is unchanged.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> In the commodity complex the big story is crude &mdash; down nearly 2.4% after the Energy Department&rsquo;s weekly inventory numbers.
A barrel of West Texas Intermediate trades for $59.31. To be sure, it&rsquo;s traded lower in recent weeks but the trend is unmistakable &mdash; lower highs and lower lows. Not good for the near-term outlook.
Precious metals staged a strong rally this morning, only to give most of it back by midday. At last check, the bid on gold is $4,072 and silver trades at $50.68.
No joy in crypto: Bitcoin is back below $90,000 and Ethereum under $3,000.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Follow-Up: China&rsquo;s Gold
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Now it&rsquo;s become a new cottage industry on Wall Street &mdash; guessing how much gold bullion China is stacking.
<a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs#3">Just yesterday</a> we told you how after 15-plus years, mainstream financial media are finally acknowledging that Beijing&rsquo;s gold accumulation is much greater than the official figures released by the People&rsquo;s Bank of China. Gold is how China can trade and transact with other BRICS countries &mdash; really, all of the Global South &mdash; without resorting to U.S. dollars.
Officially, China&rsquo;s gold stash is just over 2,300 metric tons. Unofficially it&rsquo;s probably over twice that total &mdash; making it the world&rsquo;s second largest behind only the United States.
Now it appears Goldman Sachs is issuing monthly estimates of China&rsquo;s gold accumulation. From Bloomberg&hellip;
China added an estimated 15 tons of gold to its forex reserves in September as central banks accelerated their purchases of bullion after a seasonal summer lull, according to Goldman Sachs Group.
The bank&rsquo;s calculation compares with only 1.24 tons of gold purchases that China officially reported for the month.
For whatever it&rsquo;s worth Goldman says the gold price will continue to rise during 2026 &mdash; just not at 2025&rsquo;s furious pace. The analysts&rsquo; year-end 2026 target is $4,900.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Golden Toilet: A Bargain!
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> Whoever bought the solid-gold toilet at auction last night got a steal.
<img class="aligncenter" title="FMF-Issue-11-19-25(1)" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/12JPJfGRi0Z4PfB06a8m4w/6f8bf7b401dcc229afa01dab444c2f8b/FMF-Issue-11-19-25_1_.png?w=540&amp;h=511" alt="FMF-Issue-11-19-25(1)" width="540" height="511" />
The Italian artist and sculptor Maurizio Cattelan created the golden toilet in 2016 and called it America &mdash; his not-so-subtle commentary on what he considers excessive wealth in this country.
As we mentioned earlier in November, the luxe loo was scheduled to be auctioned this week by Sotheby&rsquo;s after it had been held by a private collector since 2017. The collector&rsquo;s identity was made public only last week &mdash; the hedge fund manager and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen.
(The toilet is fully functional as long as it&rsquo;s hooked up to plumbing; did Cohen have it installed in one of his bathrooms?)
&ldquo;The work, which weighs just over 100 kilograms and contains roughly 2,440 ounces of gold (worth $9.9 million as of Monday evening), came to auction with a starting bid pegged to the value of its metal alone,&rdquo; according to a story at the ARTnews site.
Bidding started at $10 million even. Turns out there was only one bidder, his or her identity still unknown. The final price, including fees: $12.1 million.
Hmmm&hellip; That&rsquo;s a mere 21% premium over the spot price of gold.
For perspective, you can buy a one-ounce U.S. Gold Eagle today and expect to pay the typical dealer a premium of just over 5%.
Seen in this context, 21% percent seems paltry. Looking forward a year or two, the buyer stands to make more money from the gold than from the &ldquo;artistic value&rdquo; of the work!
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Gold IRAs, Quality of Labor
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you address the pitfalls of purchasing gold?&rdquo; a reader writes.
&ldquo;In April I decided to roll over my IRA into gold coins and decided to use American Hartford Gold. I recently went to find out that the value of the gold I purchased was worth 20% less than the money I invested. Also the coins had not appreciated as gold bullion had over the six months.
&ldquo;I wish now I had not rolled over my IRA which is worth $50,000 less than I started with.&rdquo;
Dave responds: I&rsquo;m sorry that happened to you. In mid-2023 we published <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/the-truth-about-gold-iras">an extensive warning</a> about gold IRAs and the &mdash; ummm &mdash; questionable business practices of the firms that market them most aggressively. Caveat emptor.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> I figured our email thread about &ldquo;good help is hard to find&rdquo; had pretty much wound down yesterday. Was I ever wrong!
&ldquo;I live in Iowa &mdash; very rural. Iowa is basically one big farm with a few larger and many smaller cities.
&ldquo;Work ethic is our culture, but because of the things your readers stated &mdash; especially the government handouts and socialist policies &mdash; many are working the system. Working part time and living on food stamps and whatever else is given out in housing assistance, etc.
&ldquo;These beloved liberals who hate America are poisoning our country and our culture hoping that their lies will be believed by those living off their lies.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;As a retired health care worker I have seen how the work ethic has eroded,&rdquo; writes another.
&ldquo;Plus, the state and federal departments of education have lowered standards of proficiency so low to make the so-called teachers look good. What was failing 10 years ago is now being proficient.
&ldquo;Now AI is shown to take away middle-management jobs &mdash; what is there to strive for to better yourself? I'm glad I am as old as I am.
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;The readers sharing their insight into labor issues made me think of a saying:
&ldquo;&lsquo;Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create soft men. Soft men create hard times.&rsquo;
&ldquo;Is that how it goes?
&ldquo;Things have sure changed. In about 1983 I started driving a logging truck for my dad full time. Interest rates were still very high. Jobs were hard to find. It was late in the season and I worked almost 100 hours my first week from Monday through Saturday. Sunday was unpaid fix-the-truck day. I felt I had earned myself a sleep-in. Wrong.
&ldquo;The phone rang about 9 a.m.. It was my dad. He said my name to make sure it was me, and then screamed out an expletive-laden 15 seconds telling me If I didn't get to work immediately I was fired, and then hung up the phone so hard it seemed to ring the bell on my end&hellip; ha ha ha.
&ldquo;(I wasn't laughing at the time, I was getting my boots on.) The good old days.&rdquo;
<img class="intrinsic" style="float: left; display: block;" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" align="left" /> &ldquo;I am not-so-patiently waiting for someone to tell me WHERE the billions of dollars worth of &lsquo;reshored&rsquo; factories are going to get QUALIFIED employees to work in them,&rdquo; says our final correspondent.
&ldquo;The last two generations of high school graduates, along with many college graduates, cannot write a sentence without spelling and grammar errors. Basic mathematics appears to be somewhat of a mystery to them, and a very high percentage are just fat and lazy. And note that 65% of those who adhere to one particular political party support socialism and thinly disguised Marxism.&rdquo;
Dave: Thanks again to everyone for weighing in. Other mailbag topics &mdash; including Venezuela, and <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/venezuela-its-not-about-drugs">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a> generated some interesting replies &mdash; will have to wait till tomorrow. Our cup runneth over!

FMF-Issue-11-19-25(Featured)

Unfinished Business for 2025

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Venezuela: It&rsquo;s Not About Drugs
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />An American regime-change war in Venezuela, if it comes, will not be about drugs. 
Asked yesterday about sending in U.S. troops, the president said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t rule out that. I don&rsquo;t rule out anything.&rdquo;
On the other hand, he said the day before that his administration &ldquo;may be having some discussions&rdquo; with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Whatever the case, a sizable American armada is massed off Venezuela&rsquo;s coast, led by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Trump and his advisers &ldquo;have to do something big to justify this massive deployment of forces, and they have to do it SOON,&rdquo; tweets the military analyst William Schryver.
&ldquo;As in, within hours or a few days at most. They can't just hang out for weeks blowing up little boats with Reaper drones.
&ldquo;And if all they planned on doing was launching a few dozen Tomahawks at various targets in Venezuela, they would not have a carrier strike group and an amphibious ready group in the mix.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The parallels to the Iraq War that began in 2003 are many &mdash; and disturbing.
Take it from retired Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski. She was the Pentagon insider who, weeks after the war began, started blowing the whistle on the officials who peddled the most outrageous lies before the war.
&ldquo;In a world where government lies may be easily refuted in seconds, Trump&rsquo;s initiation of war for Venezuelan oil and resources presented as a war on drugs and made-up narco-terror is as illegal as it is embarrassing,&rdquo; Kwiatkowski tells the Eisenhower Media Network.
Adds the retired but tireless Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas): &ldquo;The Saddam Hussein WMD factories of 2002 have become the Nicolas Maduro cocaine and fentanyl factories of 2025 and once again the neocon war lies are amplified by the U.S. mainstream media and transmitted to the American people.
&ldquo;A new disaster is in the making. The &lsquo;global war on terror&rsquo; has been rebranded the &lsquo;hemispheric war on narco-terror&rsquo; and the U.S. military industrial complex is rubbing its hands in anticipation of a windfall.&rdquo;
But not just the military industrial complex. Time to follow the money&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;The nice thing is, they&rsquo;ve got plenty of natural resources,&rdquo; says Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida) &mdash; speaking of Venezuela.
In their more candid moments, D.C.&rsquo;s regime-change crowd is upfront about their aims. Drugs? What drugs?
&ldquo;In a democracy in Venezuela, their resources are massive,&rdquo; Scott tells the Semafor site, &ldquo;so there&rsquo;ll be a lot of people who want to invest.&rdquo;
Adds the reliably warmongering Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina): &ldquo;There&rsquo;ll be a lot of business going to Venezuela, I think, if you had a better business environment.&rdquo;
Semafor reports that &ldquo;During last month&rsquo;s IMF-World Bank meetings in Washington, Barclays organized a private meeting to talk investment opportunities with Venezuelan opposition leader Mar&iacute;a Corina Machado.&rdquo;
At the same time, the investment bank UBS assembled an eight-page memo &ldquo;visualizing the day after tomorrow&rdquo; in Venezuela. Citing the country&rsquo;s oil reserves, its &ldquo;fertile soil&rdquo; and &ldquo;severely underutilized economy,&rdquo; the report says &ldquo;Venezuela&rsquo;s transition away from Chavismo could unlock major opportunities.&rdquo; (Chavismo refers to the socialist platform of Venezuela&rsquo;s president Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013. Maduro was his chosen successor.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;Perhaps the most aggressive proponent of regime change in Venezuela has been Exxon Mobil and think tanks funded by the oil company,&rdquo; writes Harrison Berger for The American Conservative.
Venezuela is home to the world&rsquo;s biggest oil deposits &mdash; the thick and sulfurous kind of crude that American refineries are built to process.
Exxon donates at least $250,000 a year to the Center for Strategic and International Studies &mdash; &ldquo;which frequently hosts conferences with Washington&rsquo;s various handpicked Venezuelan leaders,&rdquo; Berger writes. &ldquo;Such think tanks advocate maximum-pressure sanctions and market regime-change war in Venezuela as &lsquo;democracy promotion.&rsquo;&rdquo; Exxon CEO Darren Woods serves on CSIS&rsquo; board.
Venezuela is also home to significant deposits of rare earth elements &mdash; those minerals with unpronounceable names that are essential to everything from your smartphone to fighter jets. Due in part to decades of poor decision-making in Washington, China presently accounts for 70% of global rare-earth mining.
So there you go. Venezuela is not about drugs. It&rsquo;s about a resource grab.
And the moneymaking possibilities? They&rsquo;re highly theoretical at this stage. The investment banks are operating on the assumption that regime change in Venezuela will be &mdash; to use that infamous term from Iraq &mdash; a &ldquo;cakewalk.&rdquo;
As in Iraq, that assumption could be proven catastrophically wrong.
More about that tomorrow, or perhaps later this week. We have other business to tend to&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />About the &ldquo;AI Bubble&rdquo;...
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Here we go again with mainstream nonsense: &ldquo;AI Bubble Fears Hammer Stocks for Fourth Straight Session&rdquo; says a Wall Street Journal alert on your editor&rsquo;s iPad.
In the first place, the part about the &ldquo;fourth straight session&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t even true. The S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq were more or less flat on Friday. But they did tumble on Thursday, and again after we hit &ldquo;send&rdquo; on yesterday&rsquo;s edition, and so far today as well.
The &ldquo;AI bubble&rdquo; chatter is a convenient narrative the media have latched onto. The reality is that the market was overstretched. A pullback of 5% is a perfectly normal occurrence, and we haven&rsquo;t had that since the &ldquo;Liberation Day&rdquo; scare in April.
In fact, we&rsquo;re still not there now: The S&amp;P 500 sits a little over 6,600 as we write, down another 1% on the day. The index would have to fall another 55 points to be down 5% from its record close on Oct. 28.
Just some perspective. Nvidia&rsquo;s earnings release after the close tomorrow could flip the media&rsquo;s narrative in an instant.
Among the big movers today is Cloudflare Inc. (NET) &mdash; a major provider of web-hosting services. If you had trouble accessing ChatGPT or X this morning, that&rsquo;s because Cloudflare sustained a major outage.
The rumor mill went wild about a massive cyberattack, but the company says the trouble was more pedestrian: A configuration file that looks out for malicious traffic &ldquo;grew beyond an expected size of entries.&rdquo;
Whatever the reason, shares of Cloudflare sank badly on the open; as the morning wore on, the loss on the day was trimmed to less than 2%.
<a id="3"></a>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Meanwhile, precious metals are rebounding from their own Monday-afternoon sell-off.
At last check, gold is up about 13 bucks to $4,057 and silver has gained 42 cents, sitting at $50.55.
Crude has inched its way back over $60.
Bitcoin sank under $90,000 overnight but has since recovered to nearly $93,600. Ethereum has bounced off the $3,100 level.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Now It Can Be Told (Chinese Gold)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The dam has finally broken: The mainstream is acknowledging China&rsquo;s gold accumulation is much greater than what shows up in Chinese government figures.
From the Financial Times&hellip;
China&rsquo;s unreported gold purchases could be more than 10 times its official figures as it quietly tries to diversify away from the U.S. dollar, say analysts, highlighting the increasingly opaque sources of demand behind bullion&rsquo;s record-breaking rally.
Publicly reported buying by China&rsquo;s central bank has been so low this year &mdash; 1.9 tonnes purchased in August, 1.9 tonnes in July and 2.2 tonnes in June &mdash; that few in the market believe the official figures.
The French banking giant Societe Generale estimates that Beijing&rsquo;s total purchases could reach 250 metric tons this year. But officially, the year-to-date total is only about 10% of that figure.
The FT wants to make the story all about Donald Trump. It cites Nicky Shiels, an analyst at the Swiss refinery MKS Pamp: &ldquo;It makes sense to just report the bare minimum, if need be, for fear of reprisal from the U.S. administration. Gold is seen as a pure USA hedge. In most emerging markets it is in central banks&rsquo; interest to not fully disclose purchases.&rdquo;
But non-mainstream experts, including Paradigm&rsquo;s own Jim Rickards, have said for over 15 years that Beijing understates its gold reserves. Officially they stand just over 2,300 metric tons.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> The real total is likely more than twice as large &mdash; and the goal is to accumulate a stash to rival Washington&rsquo;s 8,133.5 metric tons.
A decade ago, Jim wrote that Beijing&rsquo;s endgame was to have a &ldquo;seat at the table&rdquo; along with the United States, the European Union and Japan whenever the next financial crisis rolled around and the global financial system had to be reset.
But that was when Beijing and Washington were on friendlier terms.
Now the goal is to facilitate easier trade and transactions &mdash; bypassing the dollar &mdash; with the other BRICS countries like Russia and India.
That means China&rsquo;s trading partners need to accumulate their own gold &mdash; which means central bank gold purchases <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/57-days#3">will continue to keep a floor under the gold price</a> for years to come.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Comic Relief
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> Really, this one&rsquo;s too obvious. But it still elicits a chuckle&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3uHJ3NCrNgBiDlxseqWM4c/c608e4f9fc96e87acda37d68a2ffe33b/FMF-Issue-11-18-25_1_.png" alt="pub" width="540px" />
Really, worse than rent because the buyer shoulders the maintenance costs, right?
Moving on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Good Help Is Hard to Find (Continued)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;I have several close friends who own businesses,&rdquo; a reader writes on the topic of why good help is so hard to find.
&ldquo;The biggest labor problem they have is that most people they hire have a terrible work ethic. They show up late, do the minimum work necessary, fail to show up without notice, make up lousy excuses for not showing up, etc. In most cases, my friends don't even have to fire anyone because they just quit showing up.
&ldquo;A secondary problem is the lack of education. I've followed the problems in education since the early 1980s when I decided to go to college after dropping out of high school in 1969. By that time, colleges were testing applicants for their math and English skills to see if they needed remedial teaching. I took the tests with about 30 recent high school graduates. I and one other qualified for college algebra and I and two others qualified for English 101. I've also noted over the years that those with an excellent work ethic are also easy to teach. That's why I wrote that education was a secondary problem.
&ldquo;As to how a lower labor quality might be related to illegal immigration, I have noted that of the Mexican immigrants I've hired or worked with, almost all of them had an excellent work ethic. So it is possible that illegal immigrants returning home is complicating our labor quality issue.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;No question there are labor issues &mdash; not just with a reduction in the illegal alien workforce, but also in getting educated office workers!&rdquo; chimes in another.
&ldquo;The competence of applicants is shockingly bad. The work ethic is also lacking overall. I have had thousands of employees over my 45-year career as a business owner and the lack of education (spelling, grammar, etc.) is at a new low.
&ldquo;Funny story: My yacht was in the shipyard in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in July. Ten people were working on its bottom, employed by a subcontractor. One morning ICE showed up, two escaped over the fence and eight were put in the van never to be seen again.... I can imagine that dozens of the other yards in Florida are having similar issues. Not good for inflation&hellip;&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /> &ldquo;The only surprise to me of the &lsquo;good help is hard to find&rsquo; response is that it isn&rsquo;t HIGHER,&rdquo; says our final correspondent.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve observed increasingly over the past 30 years in the U.S. Army and construction trades that the work ETHIC of the entire country has eroded/is eroding, revealing the bedrock of entitlement and sheer laziness.
&ldquo;I grew up in a farm and entrepreneurial environment where work ethic was a well-attended religion of small operations. As industrial farming and corporate culture replaced these traditional methods, there came employees&hellip; people with no incentive to work harder. Moreover, government subsidies and bailouts replaced incentives to &lsquo;work for it.&rsquo;
&ldquo;At this point, my business ventures must shift away from relying on quality laborers (and tenants who neglect to pay rent) into individual enterprises, as good help is nearly impossible to find (outside of illegal aliens and the Amish). This boils down to a cultural shift to entitlement and handouts.
&ldquo;Love the 5! Thanks and blessings!!&rdquo;
Dave: Thanks to everyone for their input.
We have other topics to tackle in our backlogged mailbox &mdash; including the fate of New York City under the incoming Mayor Mamdani. Catch you tomorrow!

FMF-Issue-11-18-25(Featured)

Venezuela: It’s Not About Drugs

FMF-Issue-11-17-25(Featured)

JPM, Epstein and the Virgin Islands

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Clarity Makes You Competitive
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Paradigm Press was built on a simple premise: Investors need clarity &mdash; not noise. And with the FREE Paradigm Press app, that clarity now reaches you faster than ever before. 
Inside the app, every market alert, deep-dive insight and editorial hot take is delivered in real-time. No inbox hunting. No waiting for tomorrow&rsquo;s issue. Just immediate, distilled analysis from the same team you already trust &mdash; all in one place.
And the real game-changer? The app&rsquo;s Daily Feed. This isn&rsquo;t a firehose of headlines or a copy-paste of Wall Street sentiment. It&rsquo;s a living, rolling stream where Paradigm editors flag the shifts, signals and surprises that actually matter.
This week, that feed surfaced four themes worth your attention&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Trading Pro Enrique Abeyta &mdash; A Rolling Correction Hiding in Plain Sight
&ldquo;The stock market has been undergoing a rolling correction over the last few months,&rdquo; he writes. &ldquo;It has not shown up as much in the major stock indexes as they are being powered by the largest stocks, but it can be seen in the majority of stocks.&rdquo;
He highlights five historical periods when the Nasdaq-100 rose for seven-straight months &mdash; and in four out of those five instances, the following month turned negative.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5yCPrQ5LRDrzQXkzvPfHtA/0248ff453f22f5fb9a29e53b1553d642/dailyfeed-111225-2.png" alt="Enrique Daily Feed" />
&ldquo;It is CURRENTLY down 1.26% for November,&rdquo; Enrique notes. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s see what happens for the rest of the month.&rdquo;
For anyone lulled by surface-level analysis, this is the kind of hidden cycle Enrique specializes in calling out.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Editor Adam Sharp &mdash; Silver&rsquo;s Breakout Setup
Adam flags a chart showing silver clawing its way back from its recent sell-off, now trading just under $54 an ounce.
&ldquo;Silver has staged an impressive comeback,&rdquo; he writes. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s a six-month chart to give some perspective.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4GqqWuESjng375KioVEVhY/02697b83ba6f20c41c5eefbab1592e08/dailyfeed-111225-3.png" alt="Adam Sharp Daily Feed" />
&ldquo;If silver can move up a few more dollars to fresh all-time highs, it should be off to the races again.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s a one-two punch: a metal regaining momentum and sitting on the doorstep of a technical breakout.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Our own Managing Editor Dave Gonigam &mdash; A Viral Screenshot You Shouldn&rsquo;t Believe
Dave highlights a piece of political misinformation circulating widely online &mdash; and why it should be ignored.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2K0jPdyvANQLeVHFkR5NxY/12602a7688acf6fa0b72e9aa1f5e6eea/dailyfeed-111125-2.png" alt="Dave Gonigam Daily Feed" />
&ldquo;As far as I can tell&hellip; this screenshot is not authentic,&rdquo; he writes. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s being spread far and wide on social media, including among Trump voters, because, under the circumstances, it seems just plausible enough.&rdquo;
In an era when markets react to every headline, knowing what&rsquo;s real &mdash; and what&rsquo;s engineered for clicks &mdash; is half the battle.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Editor Sean Ring &mdash; A Housing-Crisis Icon Bows Out
Sean posts about an under-the-radar retirement (no, not that one; more on that in a moment).
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the end of an era&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/4Qn5WUNacW8ryRjkaNhg6h/e39f0eb53aeac8deea1ccbdb06982dbe/dailyfeed-111325-1.jpg" alt="Sean Ring Daily Feed" />
&ldquo;Michael Burry, whom Christian Bale played in The Big Short, has retired from professional fund management.&rdquo;
For a generation of investors shaped by 2008, Burry&rsquo;s exit is more than a personnel change &mdash; it&rsquo;s a bookmark in the history of modern markets.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The magic here isn&rsquo;t just that you get Paradigm&rsquo;s best ideas. You get them when they happen. No inbox delay. No wading through half your morning news sources just to figure out what actually matters.
This is the stuff our editors read, react to and riff on daily. And now you can see it all the instant they hit &ldquo;publish.&rdquo;
So readers never have to wonder: &ldquo;Did I miss something important?&rdquo;
If ever there were a time for an information upgrade, it&rsquo;s in this uncertain market. Major movers are shifting: The Fed is unpredictable, geopolitics are volatile and investors are looking for up-to-the-minute research from credible analysts.
The Paradigm Press app meets that demand&hellip;
<ul>
<li>Speed: Get critical ideas fast</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Coverage: All subscriptions, plus exclusive free resources, in one place</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Daily Feed: Out-of-the-box market insights that clear away the clutter.</li>
</ul>
To cut through today&rsquo;s noise and uncertainty, a more effective tool is required. Discover for yourself by <a href="https://d2z65klgtz99km.cloudfront.net/PPG-App/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">downloading the FREE Paradigm Press smartphone app for iPhone or Android.</a>
The Paradigm Press app is built for the investor who wants less clutter, more precision &mdash; and real-time access to some of the sharpest minds in financial analysis.
The Daily Feed? That&rsquo;s the icing on the cake: rapid-fire commentary and hot takes on every major shift, from stablecoins to the S&amp;P 500.
The app is right there &mdash; when you need it most.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />&ldquo;BTD!&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />It&rsquo;s shaping up to be an interesting week for stock
If you&rsquo;ve been following the Daily Feed in our app, you know context is key. Before we get into the market notes, here&rsquo;s one more sharp-eyed read from Enrique Abeyta to frame what&rsquo;s really happening.
<blockquote>It feels pretty painful out there in the stock market right now &mdash; especially in the more speculative stocks. A quick reminder, though, that the REAL companies have been performing very well: 82% of S&amp;P 500 companies reported a profit beat and 77% reported better-than-expected sales. This is NOT how BEAR markets start. BTD!</blockquote>
BTD? Buy the dips&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Checking our screen, it&rsquo;s just the DJIA that&rsquo;s registering losses so far today. At the time of writing, the Big Board&rsquo;s down 0.25% to 47,340.
The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq, meanwhile, are clawing their way out of the red. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, in particular, is up 0.70% to 23,030 while the S&amp;P 500 is up 0.45% to 6,765.
When it comes to the commodities complex, it&rsquo;s a mixed bag. The price of crude&rsquo;s up 2.45% to $60.15 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate. But precious metals are getting clobbered. Gold&rsquo;s down 2.10% to $4,105.40 per ounce. Silver? Down 3.70% to $51.20.
And there&rsquo;s no way around it: Bitcoin&rsquo;s having a no-good day. The flagship crypto is down in the dumps to $96,900. (Another Daily Feed bonus, apropos of BTC: &ldquo;New tentative downside target is $84,100,&rdquo; says editor Sean Ring.) Ethereum, however, is up 1.75% to $3,225.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />The Quantum Question
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;What happens when quantum computing becomes real? Will the tech make all these recently built AI data centers obsolete?&rdquo; a reader asks Paradigm editor Davis Wilson at our sister e-letter The Million Mission. 
&ldquo;To answer frankly, not at all,&rdquo; Davis replies. &ldquo;Quantum computers will eventually transform certain industries &mdash; helping scientists design new drugs, optimize global shipping routes or even break today&rsquo;s encryption &mdash; but that&rsquo;s still at least 10-plus years away.
&ldquo;The machines we have now are tiny, unstable and need ultra-cold environments to function,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;Even once they mature, they won&rsquo;t replace AI data centers.
&ldquo;Quantum computers excel at very specific problems, but AI relies on a different kind of math that runs best on GPUs and traditional processors.
&ldquo;Most experts expect a hybrid future: quantum chips will plug into existing cloud and AI systems as accelerators, not replacements. Think of them as powerful co-pilots that make AI faster or more energy-efficient in certain tasks.
&ldquo;So no, today&rsquo;s massive AI data centers aren&rsquo;t going anywhere,&rdquo; Davis concludes. &ldquo;If anything, quantum computing will make them even more important as the backbone for next-generation tech.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Buffett: Before the Myth
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Warren Buffett&rsquo;s retirement became official the moment his farewell letter went out this week &mdash; a quiet but unmistakable closing chapter for a man who shaped market dynamics for 60 years.
&ldquo;I still remember the first time I saw him in person back in 2003 at the Berkshire annual meeting in Omaha,&rdquo; James Altucher says. &ldquo;The Buffettpalooza.&rdquo;
There were 20,000 people, Krispy Kreme donuts and a stampede across freshly cleaned floors where &ldquo;everyone was slipping, falling, sliding.&rdquo;
The night before that meeting, James met a man who had bought 200 Berkshire shares in 1976, sold half when they doubled and kept the rest forever.
Those remaining shares &mdash; worth $74 million &mdash; became the purest illustration of Buffett&rsquo;s worldview: Wealth comes via patience, not cleverness.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not easy to find unusual things about Warren Buffett,&rdquo; James writes, but he has always been drawn to the details that reveal who Buffett was before he became&hellip; BUFFETT.
&ldquo;Why should you listen to me?&rdquo; asks James. &ldquo;Because I wrote THE book on Warren Buffett (even Buffett said so).&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5exVHfv7q9KmxFdCmgfPwh/b2da5cd85a407dff7982f4e655d56606/trade_like_warren_buffett_ja.png" alt="Trade Like Warren Buffett" width="232px" />
&ldquo;Probably the worst cover in the history of the printing press,&rdquo; says James. 
James reminds readers, for instance, that Buffett&rsquo;s worst investment wasn&rsquo;t a billion-dollar oil bet but a Sinclair gas station where &ldquo;he lost $2,000, when his savings were about $9,600 at the time.&rdquo; That early sting, James believes, nudged Buffett toward the durable style that later defined Berkshire.
But the line James considers the truest window into Warren Buffett, the man, came from a shareholder&rsquo;s question about how Buffett measured success. &ldquo;I measure success by how many people love me. And the best way to be loved is to be loveable,&rdquo; he said.
&ldquo;And that,&rdquo; James says, &ldquo;was the most interesting thing I didn&rsquo;t know about Warren Buffett.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />De-Dollarization? Hold That Thought
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Robinhood is testing a simple idea that somehow feels like a plot twist: cash, delivered to your door like late-night pad thai.
This week, the brokerage teamed up with delivery app Gopuff to let customers withdraw money from their Robinhood bank accounts and have it delivered to their door in a sealed paper bag.
It&rsquo;s available now in New York and coming soon to San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and other major U.S. cities. The fee is $6.99 per delivery &mdash; unless you hold more than $100,000 across Robinhood accounts, in which case it drops to $2.99.
It&rsquo;s a curious offering for a company that built its brand on digital everything. But Robinhood has been widening its scope since March, when CEO Vlad Tenev teased a suite of traditional and not-so-traditional banking perks. Discounted helicopter rides. A shot at Met Gala tickets. And now: cash on demand.
Deepak Rao, who runs Robinhood Money, frames it this way: &ldquo;Everything gets delivered&hellip; from burritos to medicine,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Why not cash?&rdquo;
To use it, customers need a Robinhood Gold subscription ($5 a month) plus at least $1,000 in direct deposits. Deliveries run 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Gopuff drivers won&rsquo;t know whether the sealed bag contains dollar bills or diapers. But you&rsquo;ll need to meet them at the door and provide a verification code.
Here&rsquo;s the larger irony: At a moment when policymakers and financial media insist cash is dying &mdash; and in the very same week the U.S. Mint stopped producing the penny &mdash; Robinhood is betting on the opposite.
For all our talk about de-dollarization and a cashless future, the demand for physical currency isn&rsquo;t disappearing. And there&rsquo;s something heartening about that.
On the other hand&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3VDa0rOUUYCtwAoYIBdFBz/4853a7dd21fe0aa5af4c4050cb80d8bc/sam_ro_x.png" alt="Sam Ro X" />
The market moves fast: The Nasdaq is currently UP&hellip; That&rsquo;s one more reason you should download Paradigm&rsquo;s FREE app! 
Take care, reader! Enjoy the weekend.

fmf hero 111425

Correction Hiding in Plain Sight

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Trump&rsquo;s Public-Private Partnership
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Trump is not so much breaking the Reagan-Thatcher free-market model as he is returning the U.S. to an earlier model that worked well,&rdquo; writes Paradigm&rsquo;s macro expert Jim Rickards.
The Reagan Revolution aimed to dismantle the bureaucratic state built under Wilson and FDR. Trump, Jim says, &ldquo;is leapfrogging all three episodes and going back to a 19th-century model that made America great the first time.&rdquo;
<ul>
<li>He points to the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave settlers land to cultivate &mdash; more than 270 million acres across 30 states &mdash; at virtually no cost to the government. It was a partnership between public resources and private initiative</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The same logic applied to the railroad land grants of the 1850s&ndash;1870s, rural electrification in the 1930s and the massive engineering projects of the New Deal era.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;In short,&rdquo; says Jim, &ldquo;Trump is not destroying private-sector capitalism. He&rsquo;s returning America to a period when private capital could thrive with a boost from the government and when the benefits to citizens were far greater than any government could provide on its own.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not socialism. It&rsquo;s not fascism. It&rsquo;s not free-market capitalism. It&rsquo;s a pragmatic return to a time when locked-up government wealth and private-sector genius worked together to make life better for all Americans.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Trump&rsquo;s presidency is redrawing the map of the U.S. economy itself, and the pace of Trump&rsquo;s deal-making has been dizzying.
In June 2025, his administration approved Nippon Steel&rsquo;s acquisition of U.S. Steel, but with a twist: the U.S. received a &ldquo;golden share&rdquo; &mdash; giving veto power over plant closings, salary cuts or name changes. Nippon also pledged billions in U.S. facility upgrades.
In July, the government became the largest shareholder in MP Materials, the country&rsquo;s only rare-earth mine. That was followed by equity stakes in Lithium Americas and Trilogy Metals &mdash; all aimed at securing critical minerals vital for defense and clean-tech supply chains.
Trump cut a deal in August with Nvidia and AMD, allowing limited chip sales to China in exchange for a 15% profit royalty to the U.S. taxpayer. The same month, Apple agreed to invest $600 billion domestically and expand U.S. chip, glass and software production. Trump leveraged tariff threats to seal the deal.
Plus, Intel received $8.9 billion in federal investment, giving taxpayers upside in its recovery and securing future chip manufacturing on U.S. soil.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Jim believes the natural destination for these holdings is a U.S. sovereign wealth fund (SWF), modeled on Norway or Abu Dhabi&rsquo;s trillion-dollar funds. It would consolidate federal equity stakes, royalties, license fees and crypto assets.
&ldquo;If Trump is successful in creating his SWF,&rdquo; Jim says, &ldquo;the future of American wealth may no longer rely on debt and money printing but could be based on income-producing assets and hard assets held safely in trust and out of the hands of corrupt politicians.
&ldquo;The U.S. investments are strategic but are still relatively few compared with the market capitalization of all private companies,&rdquo; he notes. &ldquo;The U.S. percentage ownership in each case is in the 5&ndash;10 % range, which is a far cry from a socialist-style takeover.&rdquo;
Jim concludes: &ldquo;Trump is using some government resources to prime the pump for private wealth creation. This is in keeping with the Homestead Act, the transcontinental railroad and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
&ldquo;The boundaries between the public and private sectors have never been impermeable,&rdquo; Jim adds, &ldquo;but they do exist and most of us have a sense of which side of the line we&rsquo;re on.
&ldquo;Not anymore.&rdquo;
The Trump administration is taking ownership stakes in major corporations while selling or leasing public assets back to private hands. Some call it chaos. Jim calls it an opportunity.
&ldquo;Smart investors will put ideology aside,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;and make the most of it while the opportunity lasts.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Penny Drops
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The U.S. Mint quietly ended penny production on Nov. 12, 2025 &mdash; a footnote to most people, but a reminder of how far the dollar has fallen.
For years, critics fixated on the Mint spending roughly 3.7 cents to make a one-cent coin. But that&rsquo;s just the symptom. The real story is the century-long erosion of the currency itself.
Gold was pulled from U.S. money in 1933. Silver followed in 1965. And the penny stopped being a true copper coin in 1982, when rising metal prices forced the Mint to switch from 95% copper to a 97.5% zinc slug coated in copper. By then, the metal in a &ldquo;copper&rdquo; cent was worth more than a cent.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2705Uo8S7Q2xt1H4bteLZo/b62cdc546c02acd2b5c14fb3766c45de/fmf_coins.jpg" alt="Coins" />
Source: Reddit
When a nation can no longer afford to mint its smallest denomination, it&rsquo;s not the coin that&rsquo;s been debased &mdash; it&rsquo;s the currency behind it.
If the raw metal in a low-value coin becomes too expensive relative to the currency&rsquo;s face value, that is a sign of falling purchasing power. The progressive removal of precious and semiprecious metals from U.S. coins reflects the declining real value of the dollar over time.
Ending penny production is, in part, an acknowledgment that the dollar can no longer support what used to be a trivial unit of account.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />After 43 days, the federal government shutdown is officially over. Late Wednesday night, President Trump signed a stopgap funding bill to keep agencies operating through Jan. 30, 2026.
The measure already cleared the Senate earlier in the week, and it passed the House on Wednesday evening by a tight 222&ndash;209 vote &mdash; ending what became the longest shutdown in modern U.S. history.
This morning, the government began its slow restart. The Office of Management and Budget directed agencies to reopen and ordered furloughed federal workers back to their posts.
But the effects won&rsquo;t disappear overnight. Millions of Americans are awaiting food stamp benefits, though the USDA says most SNAP payments should resume within 24 hours of reopening. And federal workers are still waiting on back pay.
Here&rsquo;s how Wall Street is responding&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The DJIA did get a relief bounce yesterday, closing above 48,000 for the first time. But that enthusiasm is fizzling today. 
The Dow&rsquo;s pulled back 0.85% to 47,835; at the same time, the S&amp;P 500 is down 1.10% to 6,775. It&rsquo;s the tech-heavy Nasdaq that&rsquo;s really getting clobbered: down 1.70% to 23,000.
Crude, meanwhile, is the only commodity we report that&rsquo;s getting a boost. A barrel of WTI is up 0.60%, but still historically low at $58.85. Precious metals, you wonder? Silver&rsquo;s getting crushed &mdash; down 1% to $52.85, and gold is down 0.35% to $4,200 per ounce.
Likewise, crypto is in the red. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 1.35% to $100,265 while Ethereum&rsquo;s down 3.40% to $3,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Bridging the Gap
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Last week, we introduced readers to <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/no-bailout-for-you-openai/#2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bittensor</a>&mdash; a decentralized AI network James Altucher believes solves the &ldquo;permission problem&rdquo; in modern AI. 
According to James, AI today is trapped in its own walled garden: &ldquo;I need permission from Nvidia for chips, permission from VCs for funding and permission from governments for licenses,&rdquo; he says.
Bittensor works differently. Instead of one big centralized AI system, Bittensor is made up of many smaller networks, each called a subnet.
A subnet is essentially a mini-startup inside the Bittensor ecosystem. Anyone &mdash; independent developers, researchers, small teams &mdash; can create one. You don&rsquo;t need a big company or venture capital backing. You just launch a subnet that performs a specific task.
Some subnets detect deep fakes, for instance. Some train AI models. Others build cybersecurity tools or trading algorithms. Every subnet is its own competitive marketplace where people around the world &ldquo;compete to do the work,&rdquo; James says.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Subnet tokens are used to reward participants &mdash; miners, stakers or contributors &mdash; based on the work they perform inside that subnet. They&rsquo;re like shares in that mini-startup.
But here&rsquo;s the critical design choice: You can&rsquo;t buy a subnet token directly. &ldquo;To get a subnet token, you ALWAYS need TAO,&rdquo; James explains.
TAO is the reserve asset of the entire system. It is the currency that everything flows through:
<ul>
<li>Using a digital TAO wallet, you buy TAO (your entry ticket)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>You deposit TAO into the subnet (your investment)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>You earn subnet tokens (your reward &mdash; like getting shares).</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;Everything routes through TAO &mdash; every incentive, every [reward], every subnet entry,&rdquo; says James.
&ldquo;Up to now, the process has been too technical for most people,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;Bridges change that.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />A bridge is a piece of software that plugs Bittensor into regular crypto exchanges. When you want to buy a subnet token through a bridge, the system quietly buys TAO in the background to complete the transaction.
You never see it happen &mdash; but TAO&rsquo;s bought every single time, which creates constant built-in demand for TAO.
TAO isn&rsquo;t just a regular crypto coin: It&rsquo;s the core currency of a whole new economic system. As more subnets are created, TAO becomes more valuable.
And once bridges make those subnets easy for anyone to access, the entire ecosystem can grow much faster &mdash; with TAO benefiting at every step.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why,&rdquo; James says, &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t been this excited about an investment ecosystem in decades.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Tether: Stablecoin or SWF?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Tether is hiring two of HSBC&rsquo;s most senior precious-metals executives to support its growing gold reserve. 
Both hires &mdash; HSBC&rsquo;s global head of metals trading Vincent Domien and Mathew O&rsquo;Neill, head of precious-metals origination for Europe, the Middle East and Africa &mdash; mark a major coup.
Domien sits on the board of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and became HSBC&rsquo;s global metals chief in 2022. O&rsquo;Neill has been with the bank since 2008.
Their departure comes as the gold market is more competitive than it has been in decades, with bullion heading for its best annual performance since 1979.
Tether is the company behind USDT, the world&rsquo;s largest stablecoin &mdash; a digital token designed to hold a constant one-to-one value with the U.S. dollar.
The company has quietly accumulated one of the world&rsquo;s largest non-sovereign gold hoards, holding more than $12 billion in bullion as of September.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3jti4XzKCkp36vHE5CbDoT/3cfa92c035df8f7769dd8f5468b22d74/fmf_tether_tweet.png" alt="Tweet" width="450px" />
According to Bloomberg&rsquo;s calculations, in the year leading up to September 2025, the firm added gold at an average rate of one metric ton per week.
This expansion signals a deeper shift&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Tether is positioning itself less like a payments firm and more like an analogue to a central bank&hellip; Or a sovereign wealth fund (SWF)? 
Tether&rsquo;s reserves span U.S. Treasuries, gold and other assets &mdash; totalling $180 billion. Last year, those reserves generated $13 billion in profit; this year, the company expects roughly $15 billion.
The timing aligns with global monetary behavior. The World Gold Council reported more than 1,000 tonnes of central-bank gold purchases in 2024, making it one of the strongest years on record.
As emerging economies hedge against dollar-linked volatility, Tether appears to be making the same calculation. Its growing bullion footprint, now reinforced by HSBC veterans, suggests a long-term strategy built on hard assets rather than dollar dependency.
&ldquo;Tether&rsquo;s bullion buildup could alter the perception of stablecoins from digital cash to privately managed reserve assets,&rdquo; says an article at BeInCrypto.
&ldquo;In effect, Tether is acting less like a payment processor and more like a sovereign wealth fund.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Worst Stocking Stuffer Ever
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Apple unveiled an extra pocket for your iPhone: a pouch &mdash; priced around $150&ndash;$230 &mdash; that looks suspiciously like a repurposed sock. Just in time for the holidays!
It&rsquo;s a limited-time collaboration with Miyake Design Studio &mdash; the brand behind Steve Jobs&rsquo; iconic black turtlenecks.
The accessory is already being lampooned. Deservedly so.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1cyx9cpViM37rjxw0aeiYD/86d729855f0cedf20c2830093355e6d9/fmf_pouch.png" alt="Pouch" />
Courtesy: Apple Form: 0. Function: 0. Consumer: &ndash; $150&ndash;$230.
One imagines Jobs, wherever he is, observing this knitted phone holster and reconsidering his life&rsquo;s work &mdash; and the late Issey Miyake taking similar inventory.
Apple, meanwhile, seems to be floating a social experiment to determine just how far brand loyalty can stretch&hellip; before it unravels completely.
Have a great day! We&rsquo;ll be back tomorrow&hellip;

fmf hero 111325

How Trump Can Make America Great Again

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />Blessed Are the Inept
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Now that Mamdani&rsquo;s actually won, the No. 1 question I&rsquo;ve been getting is: &lsquo;What happens to New York?&rsquo;&rdquo; recounts Buck Sexton &mdash; the No. 1 voice in conservative talk radio and former CIA officer.
Before answering that, he offers some context. Buck and his two brothers grew up in the city, but all eventually migrated south during the pandemic.
&ldquo;Mason was the first one to make the move, the original pioneer, while the rest of us were still trying to convince ourselves that outdoor dining in February counted as &lsquo;normal life.&rsquo; Then our other brother followed.&rdquo;
Buck stayed a bit longer&mdash;&ldquo;not because I was clinging to the city,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;but because I still had routines, work and family there. Our parents are still in New York.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like I disappeared into the Everglades and swore an oath to Publix,&rdquo; he adds. The family already had &ldquo;a foot in Florida before the pandemic,&rdquo; and the breakdown during COVID only sped things up.
Buck insists, however, the virus didn&rsquo;t &ldquo;ruin&rdquo; New York. &ldquo;COVID just happened to hit while the city was already weakened,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The real damage was eight years of Bill de Blasio taking the safest, most functional version of New York in modern history and slowly dulling every edge of it.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;People forget the New York that de Blasio inherited was probably the best city in America, and I would argue the world, bar none,&rdquo; says Buck.
For the first few years of his first term as mayor, Buck notes, de Blasio &ldquo;tried to tell all of us how safe the city was, how much investment had gone into making NYC better.&rdquo; But it took half a decade before people realized &ldquo;how much he&rsquo;d actually broken.&rdquo; By then, Buck says, &ldquo;the damage had already spread.&rdquo;
He describes de Blasio&rsquo;s daily routine as a kind of metaphor for the whole era: &ldquo;He&rsquo;d roll out of bed late, ease into the day, take a chauffeured SUV 90 minutes to the YMCA in Brooklyn, work out, ride 90 minutes back, have lunch, take a nap and finally &lsquo;start working&rsquo; around 2:30 p.m. His staff used to joke that if you got an hour of his focus, you won the lottery.&rdquo;
The saving grace, Buck and Mason agree, was that &ldquo;his laziness kept him from doing even more harm.&rdquo; Which brings them to the next act in New York&rsquo;s story&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Mamdani is a different kind of problem. He has the ideology, the slogans and the activist energy, but none of the operational experience,&rdquo; Buck says.
&ldquo;De Blasio pulled the wrong levers. Mamdani doesn&rsquo;t even know where the levers are.&rdquo;
That lack of experience might paradoxically protect the city. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not going to be able to successfully transform the city into some sweeping political experiment,&rdquo; Buck says. &ldquo;[Mamdani] probably won&rsquo;t be able to do much of anything at all. And in a backward way, that might actually be the city&rsquo;s best defense.&rdquo;
A recent poll claims that 700,000 New Yorkers plan to leave because Mamdani won. &ldquo;No, they won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Buck says flatly. &ldquo;The people who were going to leave already left.&rdquo;
States including Florida and Texas, for instance, &ldquo;have already absorbed the bulk of the COVID-era migration.&rdquo; The ones with &ldquo;the flexibility, the money and the motivation are [already] gone.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/23ye716hxa6qH4TElZutH7/f5ff11acc332c86c46ff55c54634fd40/fmf_uhaul.png" alt="uhaul pricing" />
A pandemic-era reminder&hellip; 
Paradigm&rsquo;s iconoclast investor and lifelong NYC resident James Altucher fled the city in 2020. He called the pandemic&rsquo;s devastating effect on the city, in fact, <a href="https://5minforecast.com/2020/08/18/worse-than-9-11/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">worse than 9/11.</a>
If another &ldquo;50,000&ndash;100,000 high-earning, tax-contributing, remote-capable people&rdquo; decide to move out of NYC, Buck says, that would matter &ldquo;a lot.&rdquo; New York, he explains, &ldquo;runs on a very specific layer of the tax base.&rdquo;
Next, Buck assesses 34-year-old Mamdani himself&hellip;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Zohran Mamdani [has] never run anything. His resume is panels, hashtags and viral videos. He&rsquo;s no Elon Musk&hellip; He&rsquo;s not even an Eric Adams.&rdquo;
Mason Sexton adds: &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t even tried anything. There&rsquo;s no track record. Good or bad. Just nothing.&rdquo;
And Buck doesn&rsquo;t expect that to change. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see him up at sunrise with a crime-plan binder and a task force,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I see a lot of press conferences, policies by vibes and endless talk about &lsquo;justice&rsquo; and &lsquo;community.&rsquo; Not a lot of tackling core issues.&rdquo;
To Buck&rsquo;s way of thinking, &ldquo;New York&rsquo;s biggest threat has always been a competent ideologue. Mamdani is an incompetent ideologue. And at this stage, that may actually be mercy.&rdquo;
Forecasting the year ahead, Buck says New York &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t going to be a wasteland, and it&rsquo;s not going to be a comeback story either.&rdquo; It&rsquo;ll look &ldquo;a lot like it does right now &mdash; just a little more worn down around the edges.&rdquo;
Mason agrees: &ldquo;It may not be the end of the world. Think San Francisco a few years ago &mdash; more crime, more homeless, more dysfunction. [Mamdani] should be somewhat capped in terms of what he can accomplish by the state.&rdquo;
That, Buck says, is the most realistic outlook: The city &ldquo;will keep going, just not upward.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Buck and his family have deep roots in NYC. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want it to fail. But under Mamdani? It&rsquo;s not moving forward. It&rsquo;s just drifting,&rdquo; he says.
The serious damage &mdash; the crime spike, the empty offices, the population shift &mdash; &ldquo;already happened on de Blasio&rsquo;s watch, long before Mamdani showed up,&rdquo; Buck says.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the silver lining.&rdquo; Meaning, &ldquo;the only real danger now would be competence,&rdquo; he notes. &ldquo;And luckily for New York, that&rsquo;s not what we&rsquo;re dealing with.&rdquo;
&ldquo;The biggest thing working in New York&rsquo;s favor right now,&rdquo; he concludes, &ldquo;is that Mamdani isn&rsquo;t smart enough, experienced enough or disciplined enough to implement the things he talks about.
&ldquo;He can&rsquo;t ruin the city&hellip; He doesn&rsquo;t know how the city works. And in 2025, that might be the closest thing New York gets to hope.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Fed&rsquo;s Family Feud
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The Fed&rsquo;s favorite mouthpiece, Nick Timiraos of the Wall Street Journal, reports that Powell&rsquo;s Fed is facing one of its sharpest internal rifts in years. 
Specifically, policymakers are split over which danger looms larger &mdash; persistent inflation or a weakening labor market. That divide has &ldquo;complicated what looked like a workable plan less than two months ago,&rdquo; Timiraos says.
When the Fed cut rates in September and again in October, a slim majority expected to continue easing through year-end. But hawks pushed back hard, arguing further cuts risk reigniting inflation. Powell, trying to hold the center, said after the October meeting that another December cut was &ldquo;far from&rdquo; certain.
The debate, Timiraos notes, reflects &ldquo;two contingents growing louder and a center with less conviction.&rdquo; (At least, someone wants that narrative put out there; per usual, Timiraos is obliging.)
The Fed is far from unified &mdash; and that means markets, businesses and households can expect less clarity and more volatility, especially as the federal shutdown&rsquo;s data blackout comes to an end.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;The House will return to Washington to vote on the bill to reopen the federal government after a record-long shutdown,&rdquo; The Hill reports today.
At the time of writing, the stock market&rsquo;s not reacting favorably. The Dow &mdash; up over 300 points to 48,250 &mdash; is the only major U.S. index currently in the green. Meanwhile, the S&amp;P 500 is down 0.15% to 6,835, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 0.65% to 23,305.
Turning to the commodities complex, oil&rsquo;s getting hammered: down almost 4% to $58.60 for a barrel of West Texas crude. Precious metals, however, are rallying. Gold&rsquo;s up 2% to $4,200 per ounce; silver&rsquo;s up almost 5%, above $53.
Finally, the crypto market&rsquo;s in deep red territory. Bitcoin&rsquo;s down 1.25% to $101,600 while Ethereum&rsquo;s down 1.10% to $3,400.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Hemp Hijacks Capitol Hill
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />After weeks of gridlock, Congress appears ready to reopen the government &mdash; except for one unexpected snag: hemp.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is refusing to fast-track the funding deal because of a clause that, he says, targets his state&rsquo;s hemp businesses.
The language, buried in the Agriculture Department section, would close the &ldquo;hemp loophole&rdquo; created by the 2018 Farm Bill &mdash; the gap that let companies sell hemp-derived THC products (Delta-8, Delta-9 and others) nationwide so long as they met the law&rsquo;s hemp definition.
Delta-8 and Delta-9 are both forms of THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis. Delta-9 is the traditional, more potent form found in marijuana; Delta-8 occurs in hemp only in trace amounts and is typically synthesized from CBD.
Under current federal law, hemp products are legal if they contain less than 0.3% Delta-9 THC by dry weight. The new proposal would instead cap total THC at just 0.4 milligrams per container &mdash; a shift that would effectively wipe out most hemp-derived gummies, vapes and oils now on the market.
The regulated marijuana industry views the hemp-derived THC market as a competitive threat because it bypasses many of the taxes, licensing requirements and regulatory burdens that apply to state-licensed cannabis operators. (Think of products sold in gas stations or online, for instance.)
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Paul argues the change unfairly punishes Kentucky farmers and the businesses that turn their crops into hemp-based oils and products. 
His office says he wants the government reopened &ldquo;without delay,&rdquo; but objects to provisions that &ldquo;unfairly target Kentucky&rsquo;s hemp industry.&rdquo;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/6oLldPc16ZTbcOYiyUPHj0/2eb7a2d6b85eeecd31893c51aaca77b0/randPaulX.png" alt="Rand Paul X" />
He can&rsquo;t stop the bill outright, but he can slow it for days by forcing procedural votes. Meanwhile, the White House says President Trump &ldquo;supports the current language in the bill on hemp.&rdquo;
Paul blames fellow Kentuckian Mitch McConnell for the restriction. McConnell, who championed hemp in 2018, now says legalization produced &ldquo;an unintended consequence&rdquo; &mdash; a booming market in supposedly intoxicating hemp derivatives, estimated around $28 billion.
Support for a crackdown is broad: A bipartisan coalition of 38 state attorneys general has urged Congress to close the loophole. As Sen. Susan Collins (ME-R) puts it, there&rsquo;s &ldquo;strong support&rdquo; to tighten the law across red and blue states alike.
Hemp &mdash; not spending &mdash; is the wrinkle keeping Capitol Hill tied in knots. For now&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Fab That Fractured Europe
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />In late September, the Dutch government invoked a Cold War-era emergency law to seize control of <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/ground-zero-of-techs-cold-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nexperia,</a> a semiconductor company based in the Netherlands but owned by China&rsquo;s Wingtech Technology. 
Officials cited &ldquo;serious governance shortcomings and actions within Nexperia&rdquo; that &ldquo;posed a threat&rdquo; to national security and the continuity of critical technology supplies.
Beijing immediately condemned the move as political interference. In retaliation, China froze exports of Nexperia chips from its domestic facilities to Europe and halted shipments of key manufacturing materials to the Netherlands. The disruption alarmed automakers already reeling from U.S. tariffs and Chinese curbs on rare earth exports.
Nexperia produces so-called &ldquo;legacy&rdquo; semiconductors used in vehicle systems such as airbags, power steering and central locking. About 70&ndash;80% of its European-made chips are sent to China for processing before being re-exported &mdash; an exposure that left Europe&rsquo;s auto sector vulnerable when Beijing turned off the tap.
By October, Volvo, Volkswagen and Jaguar Land Rover warned production shutdowns were imminent, and the European Automobile Manufacturers&rsquo; Association said supplies could run out within weeks.
Amid mounting pressure, China eased restrictions in early November, granting export exemptions for &ldquo;civilian use.&rdquo; EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic said Brussels was working toward a &ldquo;lasting, stable, predictable framework&rdquo; to restore chip flows.
The temporary truce coincided with a broader U.S.&ndash;China deal reached by Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to suspend tariffs and rare-earth bans for one year.
Yet experts warn the Nexperia episode has exposed Europe&rsquo;s dependence on Chinese manufacturing and the fragility of global supply chains. &ldquo;This is what decoupling actually looks like,&rdquo; says Tom Nunlist of Trivium China. &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s a huge mess.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />The CBOE Flip
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The former Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Global Markets address is trading in its analog soul for a server farm future. 
The behemoth at 400 S. LaSalle, once buzzing with traders, is on its way to becoming a 33-megawatt data center &mdash; a makeover fueled by today&rsquo;s relentless demand for digital infrastructure.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/3VeoL0xPrqeOzDDEoW3qYf/9579c878783bbc0cb6498709012568fc/fmf_cboe.jpg" alt="CBOE Building" />
Courtesy: LoopNet
Turns out the empty trading floors and thick wiring, engineered decades ago for split-second trades, are ideal for racks of humming servers instead of shouting brokers.
Legacy Investing, the new owner, plans to have the facility online by the end of next year, transforming a monument to finance into a tech-heavy digital hub.
What makes urban centers appealing is their proximity to power and network connectivity &mdash; absolutely crucial for latency-sensitive trades, streaming and high-frequency futures. Power is in such short supply nationwide that simply boosting capacity made the property worth triple its prior sale price.
This isn&rsquo;t just a real estate flip: It&rsquo;s a sign of the times, with AI and the cloud fueling demand even for downtown spaces.

fmf hero 111225

Buck Sexton: NYC’s Uncertain Future

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />These Numbers Shouldn&rsquo;t Be Rising
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Amid the &ldquo;partial government shutdown,&rdquo; we&rsquo;ve had no official job numbers since August &mdash; and the official inflation numbers won&rsquo;t arrive on schedule this Thursday.
So what&rsquo;s the state of &ldquo;the economy&rdquo; right now, really?
In the first place, we&rsquo;ll remind you that official economic statistics are mostly bunk. Both the job numbers and the inflation numbers are gamed to make matters look better than they really are. If government economists used the same yardsticks they used 50 years ago, we&rsquo;d be looking at inflation north of 10% and unemployment would be on the order of 25%.
But that&rsquo;s a story for another day. What can we deduce from the figures we have available to work with?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />In the first place, it&rsquo;s clear that inflation is moving in the wrong direction.
Shutdown notwithstanding, the Bureau of Labor Statistics cobbled together a September consumer price index released back on Oct. 24. Really there was no choice: The 2026 Social Security cost-of-living increases hinged on those numbers.
With that release, the official inflation rate is 3.0%.
That&rsquo;s way better than the 9% peak in the summer of 2022. But it&rsquo;s also up substantially since last spring, advancing almost as steeply as it did in the final months of 2024.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5V8myrCzdIvEmpYZxc1mFf/a2aa473d6a6f1b0cbc9008c5fd2a7053/5Bullets_Inflation.png" alt="Moving in the Wrong Direction" />
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing benign or comfortable about 3.0% inflation,&rdquo; says Paradigm&rsquo;s macroeconomics maven Jim Rickards.
&ldquo;That rate will cut the value of the dollar in half in 24 years. It will cut it in half again in another 24 years. That means in a 48-year working career from age 17 to age 65, the dollar will lose 75% of its purchasing power. What are you working for unless wages are going up faster than inflation is devaluing the dollar?&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" /><img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Unfortunately, &ldquo;the news on the unemployment front is even worse,&rdquo; says Jim.
Granted, the figures are woefully out of date by now. But even the available figures are concerning &mdash; an official unemployment rate of 4.1% in June, 4.2% in July and 4.3% in August.
That&rsquo;s still low by historical standards. But it&rsquo;s higher than at any time in 2023. And like inflation, it&rsquo;s trending in the wrong direction.
There&rsquo;s a handful of private-sector figures to work with. None of them is encouraging. The payroll firm ADP says employers added a meager 10,000 jobs during August, September and October.
And as mentioned here last week, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas finds that employers cut over 153,000 jobs during October &mdash; the worst October on record since 2003.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Under the circumstances, Jim believes the Federal Reserve will cut its benchmark fed funds rate again at its next meeting a month from now.
Accelerating inflation notwithstanding, the Fed is putting greater emphasis right now on the weakening job market.
Wall Street might interpret rate cuts as &ldquo;stimulative.&rdquo; But as Jim sees it, it&rsquo;s bad news. Markets are already driving many short-term interest rates lower without the Fed&rsquo;s help. That&rsquo;s a sign &ldquo;that growth is slowing, and the U.S. economy is heading into a recession (at worst) or sliding sideways (at best).&rdquo;
Jim is on guard for the stock market to react badly &mdash; which might easily drive a fear trade into gold. As we keep emphasizing, Jim recommends keeping 10% of your investable assets in physical gold.
Yes, gold prices are up substantially from where they were at the start of the year. But if you&rsquo;re not at 10% yet, it&rsquo;s still not too late to start. Use dollar-cost averaging: Buy a little bit every week or every month to take advantage of periodic price dips as you work your way up to 10%.
That way you&rsquo;re set no matter what the stock market does.
And on that score&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />The Post-Shutdown Stock Market
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />The shutdown isn&rsquo;t over, but it&rsquo;s closer to being over now than at any time in the last 42 days &mdash; which historically bodes well for the stock market.
Paradigm trading pro Enrique Abeyta has been adamant in recent days about how the end of a government shutdown typically signals a stock market rally.
On the Paradigm mobile app today, Enrique shared this chart from Nautilus research showing the post-shutdown performance of the S&amp;P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite going back to 1981. The little green circles indicate when each shutdown ended.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5rtxaJpgYtCNrddoBbG4HI/7c3f21c64f3a652f39e2cf4600d4247f/dailyfeed-111125-4.png" alt="Government Shutdown End Dates" />
The typical outcome is &ldquo;higher 90% of the time six months and one year later &mdash; with strong double-digit returns.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />But the shutdown&rsquo;s not over yet &mdash; and both the S&amp;P and the Nasdaq are in the red today.
Nothing major: At last check the S&amp;P remains over 6,800 and the Nasdaq is well over 23,000. And the Dow has rallied nearly a half percent.
<a id="3"></a>Congratulations are in order for Rickards&rsquo; Strategic Intelligence readers, who collected nearly 70% gains playing Intel in just over a year. &ldquo;Intel is sensitive to the economy. Its stock could correct due to rising recession risks,&rdquo; counsels analyst Dan Amoss.
Precious metals are digesting yesterday&rsquo;s big gains &mdash; gold still over $4,100 and silver comfortably above $50. Crude has rallied over a buck to $61.18.
But crypto is slumping, Bitcoin sinking toward $103,000 and Ethereum under $3,500.
Only one economic number of note came out today &mdash; and it merits a bullet of its own. Read on&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Why Is Good Help So Hard to Find?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Aside from rising jobless rates, something truly whacked-out is going on in the U.S. job market.
This morning the National Federation of Independent Business issued its monthly Small Business Optimism index. This survey, conducted regularly since 1973, offers a valuable snapshot into what&rsquo;s happening in Main Street America.
The headline number is a snooze: Optimism dipped from 98.8 in September to 98.2 in October &mdash; still slightly higher than the survey&rsquo;s long-term average. &ldquo;Owners report lower sales and reduced profits,&rdquo; says NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg.
Often the most eye-opening part of the survey is where owners are asked to identify their &ldquo;single most important problem&rdquo; from a list of 10 possibilities. At various times this year, the list has been topped by taxes, inflation and &ldquo;quality of labor.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />In October, &ldquo;quality of labor&rdquo; shot up the charts. For many small-business owners, good help isn&rsquo;t just hard to find, it&rsquo;s nearly impossible.
Quality of labor was cited by 27% of respondents &mdash; up dramatically from 18% the month before. It hasn&rsquo;t been this high on the list since 29% in November 2021, the worst of the post-pandemic labor shortage.
Nothing else came close &mdash; taxes cited by 16%, inflation by 12%, poor sales by 10%.
Some detail the NFIB&rsquo;s report: &ldquo;Labor quality reported as the single most important problem was the highest in the construction, transportation and professional services industries&hellip; Nearly half (49%) of small businesses in the construction industry reported labor quality as their single most important problem, 22 points higher than for all firms.&rdquo;
The report is silent about why this might be the case. Each month&rsquo;s report includes comments from a cross-section of business owners. The only comment from the construction industry comes from Oregon, and it has nothing to do with labor quality: "Government continues to put more financial pressure on the construction business. There are more regulations and higher OSHA fines against the people who actually build this country."
At the risk of getting too far out over our skis&hellip; is it a case of small construction and transportation businesses losing labor from illegal migrants?
&ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; says Jim Rickards&rsquo; senior analyst Dan Amoss, &ldquo;there is an illegal immigrant dynamic here of self-deportation or moving to the underground/cash economy (this is a touchy subject, but economically important).&rdquo;
As long as the NFIB report is mute about the potential causes behind this phenomenon, we&rsquo;re hard-pressed to imagine it&rsquo;s anything else.
(Of course, we have small-business owners among our diverse readership. If you have any insights, please share: <a href="mailto:feedback@paradigmpressroom.com">feedback@paradigmpressroom.com</a>)
If our thesis is correct, there&rsquo;s the potential for a ripple effect to reach the big publicly traded homebuilders &mdash; whose costs of doing business could jump big-time.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Ring of Truth
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Your editor started the day spending the better part of 10 minutes trying to figure out if this screenshot is authentic&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/2K0jPdyvANQLeVHFkR5NxY/12602a7688acf6fa0b72e9aa1f5e6eea/dailyfeed-111125-2.png" alt="White House Press Release" />
For sure, it went viral on social media, shared widely &mdash; including by people who voted for Trump last year.
&ldquo;Now it&rsquo;s ****ing 15 year car loans,&rdquo; tweeted Breck Worsham, who goes by the handle The Patriotic Blonde. &ldquo;I. CAN&rsquo;T. TAKE. IT.&rdquo;
As far as I can tell, there&rsquo;s nothing to it. If it were for real, corporate media would be reporting it. But a Google News search turns up nothing. Nor does anything turn up on the president&rsquo;s Truth Social feed &mdash; which is where you&rsquo;d expect to find it first if it were legit.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />So why mention it at all? Because it&rsquo;s a sign of the times. 
On the heels of the real and nearly-as-daft proposal for <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/cryptos-make-or-break-moment/#3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">50-year mortgages</a>, are 15-year auto loans that much more far-fetched?
Whoever devised the screenshot realized it had verisimilitude &mdash; the ring of truth.
It reminds me of an episode 20 years ago: The website Capitol Hill Blue reported that in a fit of anger, President George W. Bush snapped at a group of lawmakers, "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face! It&rsquo;s just a g&ndash;d&mdash;-- piece of paper!"
No one ever substantiated the account &mdash; and in fact Capitol Hill Blue retracted the story. But coming from the guy who signed the Patriot Act into law, it had the ring of truth, didn&rsquo;t it?
We chronicled a more recent instance in this space <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/who-planted-this-fake-news" target="_blank" rel="noopener">two years ago</a> &mdash; when Joe Biden supposedly said he was thinking about emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Again, it was bonkers &mdash; but at the same time, almost believable.
The takeaway is this: Memes like the phony 15-year auto loans don&rsquo;t catch on unless there&rsquo;s already a receptive audience.
And there wouldn&rsquo;t be a receptive audience if there weren&rsquo;t a lot of economic distress out there&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Crypto Winter?
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/cryptos-make-or-break-moment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After yesterday&rsquo;s crypto-themed Bullet No. 1</a>, we heard from a member of our Omega Wealth Circle&hellip;
&ldquo;Dave, I invested in GBTC in my IRA back in 2018 after doing a similar analysis to what you showed, expecting it might go up 20X or more. It went up about 10X and I held on hoping for more, only to watch it go back down into the next trough. This time, I sold it back in August, missing the very top by about 10% (assuming the top for this cycle is in).
&ldquo;As many have noted, Bitcoin now tracks fairly closely with tech stocks, many of which appear to be in a bubble. No telling when that may pop, but even if the reason for the decline is different, I would not be surprised by a drop of 50&ndash;75% in Bitcoin (and tech stocks) over the next 12&ndash;18 months. Should that happen, I might well buy another Bitcoin ETF to try to ride the cycle again.
&ldquo;And with my GBTC proceeds I invested in silver miners, which are thus far up nicely, and would seem to me to have less downside for the moment. We shall see.&rdquo;
Dave responds: Hmmm&hellip; sell crypto, buy silver miners. Sounds like an intriguing pair trade!

fmf hero 111125

These Numbers Shouldn’t Be Rising

fmf 111025 hero

Crypto’s Make-or-Break Moment

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />No Bailout for You, OpenAI
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />OK, that didn&rsquo;t take long.
When we left you yesterday, we were agog at the notion that OpenAI &mdash; the company behind ChatGPT &mdash; was talking openly about taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to finance its expansion.
Federal loan guarantees would &ldquo;really drop the cost of financing,&rdquo; said OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar.
Gee, ya don&rsquo;t say!
The backlash on social media was so fierce that Friar had to issue a butt-covering &ldquo;clarification&rdquo; on her LinkedIn page. All she was really talking about when she used the word &ldquo;backstop,&rdquo; she said, was that &ldquo;American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity which requires the private sector and government playing their part.&rdquo;
We concluded our write-up with the observation that presumably someone in the White House took note of the torches-and-pitchforks reaction to Friar&rsquo;s sense of entitlement.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Oh, did someone ever notice. It got all the way up to David Sacks, the venture-capital guy who&rsquo;s now the White House AI and crypto czar. And he laid down the law&hellip;
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/7CDReemycfmRA5Pm7cdr2F/81abc72fa582a6c213fb67e47da24eb0/DavidSacksTweet.png" alt="Tweet" />
Sacks allowed Friar more grace than we did. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think anyone was actually asking for a bailout. (That would be ridiculous.)&rdquo;
<a id="2"></a>And he added this: &ldquo;That said, we do want to make permitting and power generation easier. The goal is rapid infrastructure buildout without increasing residential rates for electricity.&rdquo;
Good. We&rsquo;ve been sounding the alarm about AI and electricity in these digital pages for nearly two years now.
But reliable power isn&rsquo;t going to solve AI&rsquo;s most fundamental problem &mdash; which we&rsquo;ll tackle in Bullet No. 2&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />AI&rsquo;s &ldquo;Goodbye, AOL&rdquo; Moment
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Remember AOL? For many people in the mid-1990s, America Online was their training wheels for the internet.
Back then, &ldquo;AOL was the centralized network everyone knew,&rdquo; recalls Paradigm&rsquo;s AI authority James Altucher.
But over time, people discovered there was a whole new and exciting online world that existed outside of AOL&rsquo;s walled garden. And it was no more difficult to access, really, than AOL itself.
&ldquo;A decade later, AOL vanished, and the open internet built the modern world.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />As James sees it, AI&rsquo;s most fundamental problem is that it&rsquo;s still stuck in its AOL phase. Everything is centralized. AI is functioning in its own walled garden.
&ldquo;If I want to start an AI company today, I need permission from Nvidia for chips, permission from VCs for funding and permission from governments for licenses.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the chokehold. That&rsquo;s what makes AI feel like it&rsquo;s already been captured &mdash; before it even matured.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Enter something called Bittensor. 
&ldquo;Since launch,&rdquo; says James, &ldquo;Bittensor has been proving that you can build companies without permission.
&ldquo;Not through OpenAI, not through Google&rsquo;s servers, but through a decentralized network where anyone &mdash; anywhere &mdash; can contribute compute, data or models&hellip; and earn.
&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t need anyone&rsquo;s blessing. You don&rsquo;t need venture capital. You just spin up a subnet &mdash; your own mini-network &mdash; and let anyone in the world compete to do the work.&rdquo;
If that sounds like something crypto-adjacent, you&rsquo;re absolutely right. Bittensor has a native token called TAO &mdash; whose price just hit a 10-month high while the rest of the crypto market was sinking.
The key is those subnets James mentioned: &ldquo;Each subnet is like a startup. Some detect deepfakes. Some train LLMs. Some build 3D models. Others trade predictions. Every subnet has its own token (&lsquo;alpha tokens&rsquo;), its own incentives and its own miners.
&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the thing: to buy a subnet token, you need TAO. Every subnet purchase = TAO demand.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s why we&rsquo;re seeing TAO rise while the rest of crypto falls.&rdquo;
TAO isn&rsquo;t up because of hype. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s up because a fundamental repricing is underway &mdash; one that reflects a deeper truth: The world is shifting from permissioned progress to permissionless progress. Bittensor is one project leading the way.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Missing Data
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />For a second time, Wall Street traders are missing out today on a first-Friday-of-the-month ritual &mdash; poring over the monthly job numbers.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is affected by the &ldquo;partial government shutdown&rdquo; as much as most other agencies. And so there&rsquo;s something of a data void.
➢ By the way: I&rsquo;m noticing that &ldquo;Epstein shutdown&rdquo; is starting to catch on <a href="https://x.com/ImBreckWorsham/status/1986436503988297774" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in certain corners of social media</a>. I&rsquo;ll take credit <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/keep-your-crypto-composure#4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">for starting that</a>. Heh&hellip;
Stepping into the data void this week is the executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas. It issues a monthly job-cuts report. As it happens, job cuts soared in October to 153,074 &mdash; up 175% from October 2024.
In fact, this is the worst October report since 2003 &mdash; a month when the big box-office draw was a reboot of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
&ldquo;Like in 2003, a disruptive technology is changing the landscape,&rdquo; says Challenger&rsquo;s chief revenue officer Andy Challenger. &ldquo;At a time when job creation is at its lowest point in years, the optics of announcing layoffs in the fourth quarter are particularly unfavorable.&rdquo;
Meanwhile, there&rsquo;s a major economic number from China: Exports in October fell 1.1% in dollar terms year-over-year. It&rsquo;s the first decline since February. The number is something of a surprise &mdash; and at least for the time being, it looks like a one-off.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />What&rsquo;s been a generally rotten week for stocks isn&rsquo;t getting any better today.
The S&amp;P 500 is down another 1% to 6,649. The Dow is holding up better, the Nasdaq is faring worse.
Gold is up nearly 50 bucks to $4,024 and silver has roared 70 cents higher to $48.65. Crude is stabilizing from this week&rsquo;s sell-off at $59.60. Bitcoin hovers just over $101,000 and Ethereum a hair above $3,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />The Truth About Musk&rsquo;s Trillion
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Talk about a misleading headline.
Today&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal, front page, above the fold: &ldquo;Musk&rsquo;s Record Pay Plan Approved at Tesla. Investors vote in favor of $1 trillion package after CEO threatened to quit.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s all true, as far as it goes. But it&rsquo;s very incomplete, says colleague Davis Wilson. And we&rsquo;ll hasten to add that Davis is no Musk fanboy: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve said before that Tesla stock would probably trade around $50 if it weren&rsquo;t for him.&rdquo;
So here&rsquo;s the reality: &ldquo;This is not a $1 trillion payday. It&rsquo;s a performance-based plan tied to some of the hardest business goals ever set.&rdquo;
Musk didn&rsquo;t even ask for $1 trillion in TSLA stock. He asked for 25% of the company&rsquo;s voting power &mdash; up from roughly 15% now.
&ldquo;His goal is simple,&rdquo; Davis writes today at The Million Mission: &ldquo;He wants enough control to guide Tesla&rsquo;s long-term mission in AI, robotics and autonomy without being overruled by short-term investors or activists.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />And he&rsquo;s going to have to earn that control &mdash; via a series of stepped-up performance goals. The final step is for TSLA to achieve a market cap of $8.5 trillion. Right now it&rsquo;s about $1.5 trillion.
And he can&rsquo;t get there by playing accounting games. He also has to achieve the following milestones&hellip;
<ul>
<li>20 million vehicle deliveries (Tesla has delivered over 8 million so far)</li>
<li>10 million Full Self-Driving subscriptions</li>
<li>1 million bots delivered</li>
<li>1 million robotaxis in operation.</li>
</ul>
&ldquo;On the financial side,&rdquo; says Davis, &ldquo;Tesla must achieve between $50 billion and $400 billion in annual adjusted profit. For reference, last quarter&rsquo;s adjusted EBITDA was $4.2 billion.
&ldquo;He&rsquo;s got 10 years to reach these targets.&rdquo;
Can he do it? Tesla&rsquo;s board approved a pay package in 2018 that most observers thought was impossible to achieve. But Musk achieved every benchmark by 2021.
Davis&rsquo; bottom line: &ldquo;The headlines calling this a &lsquo;$1 trillion payday&rsquo; miss the point. It&rsquo;s not about how much Elon Musk might earn. It&rsquo;s about what Tesla will have to achieve for him to earn it.
&ldquo;If he wins, shareholders win bigger. If he loses, they lose nothing.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Appliances
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I have read with interest your ongoing correspondence/commentary with readers regarding refrigerators and how most appliances are now made overseas,&rdquo; begins today&rsquo;s mailbag.
&ldquo;One reader expressed her belief that today's refrigerators are made to last five or six years while older American-made refrigerators lasted much longer. I can't really speak to today's refrigerators and how long they hold up but I can tell you about my own fridge.
&ldquo;My fridge is a General Electric Frost Free model that came with my house, which was built in 1973 and in which I have lived since 1977, so I know it is original equipment. Not only does the fridge keep on going but the ice maker still works, too. I've been waiting for years for one or both of them to break down but so far that's a no-go. I shudder to think what would happen if I had to buy a new fridge since old reliable just keeps on going or what it would cost to replace or repair that old ice maker, which keeps on churning out ice cubes.
&ldquo;By the way, my General Electric stove, also from 1973, continues to serve on a daily basis. Over the past 48 years, I did have to replace my dishwasher, washing machine and clothes dryer, once each. The filter in the dryer needs to be replaced but that part is no longer made or available anywhere. I'd hate to have to replace the perfectly good dryer just because of a wire mesh filter.
&ldquo;I offer this information to verify and support the point made by your reader that the old U.S.-made products were far superior to today's models, at least as far as durability is concerned.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I bought a new Maytag washer this spring (anyone remember the Maytag repairman commercials?),&rdquo; writes another.
&ldquo;It is a Whirlpool product and made in America. It lasted exactly three months. Whirlpool owns Maytag and they use the local low bidder for warranty work. It took eight weeks to get it repaired. I don't think manufacturing location is the only factor in quality. The replacement parts were defective new out of the box two times.
&ldquo;Back in the good old days I would look in the local bargain finder and buy a used &lsquo;heavy duty&rsquo; washer or dryer. Brand didn't matter and it seemed like they lasted forever. My wife would be jonesing for a new set long before they expired.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I got a laugh out of your &lsquo;justifying&rsquo; purchasing a counter-top ice maker,&rdquo; a reader writes in response to my own fridge frustrations.
&ldquo;I could only &lsquo;justify&rsquo; spending money on some good old-fashioned ice trays after my LG ice maker stopped working after four years!&rdquo;
Dave: Yeah, that&rsquo;s where my mind was too at the outset. But like many appliances, the quality of ice cube trays ain&rsquo;t what it used to be!

fmf hero 110725

No Bailout for You, OpenAI

<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-1_2x-new.png 2x" alt="1" width="37" />OpenAI Wants a Bailout
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />It&rsquo;s come to this: The company behind ChatGPT is so poorly managed it wants a taxpayer backstop. You know, like the too-big-to-fail banks.
From the AFP newswire&hellip;
<blockquote>ChatGPT creator OpenAI, the world&rsquo;s largest private company, is asking the U.S. government to provide loan guarantees for its massive infrastructure expansion that will eventually cost more than $1 trillion.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Speaking at a Wall Street Journal business conference, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar explained that government backing could help attract the enormous investment needed for AI computing and infrastructure, given the uncertain lifespan of AI data centers.</blockquote>
<blockquote>&ldquo;This is where we&rsquo;re looking for an ecosystem of banks, private equity, maybe even governmental,&rdquo; Friar said.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Federal loan guarantees would &ldquo;really drop the cost of financing,&rdquo; she explained, enabling OpenAI and its investors to borrow more money at lower rates to meet the company&rsquo;s ambitious targets.</blockquote>
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Unlike AFP, much of the financial media &ldquo;buried the lead,&rdquo; as the saying goes.
The Wall Street Journal, sponsor of the conference where Friar spoke, thought it was more newsworthy when she said taking OpenAI public is &ldquo;not in the cards right now.&rdquo;
Bloomberg&rsquo;s angle was that Friar thinks the talk of an AI bubble is overblown and the market should demonstrate more &ldquo;exuberance&rdquo; about the sector.
But on social media&hellip; everyone knows the score.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/56ahIUv3OeIR60ReDPPUJG/e0d786bc8989312055127e46aa4aa944/fmf_rudy_tweet.png" alt="tweet 1" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/42Wsb6J6Su3h11mGhDLQKB/c6242b465c9c6f5ecb5b74faa361fe74/Fmf_tweet2.png" alt="tweet 2" /> <img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/693xKoJggzN3HBudERSQL/e8cf722a2f1f060c005331a3ec5303b4/fmf_tweet3.png" alt="tweet 3" />
The backlash was such that Friar tried to walk back her remarks in a LinkedIn post.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/1t9iXWEcn41LsUrTXauY7J/b469bf310b80d77481bd91871f4c1c51/fmf_linkedInPost.png" alt="LinkedIn Post" />
Yeah, too late.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Then again, maybe Friar was floating a trial balloon?
Maybe the endgame is that the federal government takes a stake in OpenAI, the way it has this year with Intel, U.S. Steel, MP Materials and so on.
It&rsquo;d be a win-win for OpenAI and the feds&hellip;
<ul>
<li>OpenAI gets a sorely needed cash infusion. As mentioned here in September, how is OpenAI going to spend $300 billion on a deal with Oracle over the next five years when its revenue this year will total $13 billion? And that&rsquo;s just one of OpenAI&rsquo;s announced deals!</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The government gets to call the shots on the platform with 75% market share of generative AI chatbots.</li>
</ul>
But it&rsquo;d be a lose-lose for taxpayers and ChatGPT users&hellip;
<ul>
<li>If OpenAI&rsquo;s reputed $1 trillion valuation is vastly overblown, Uncle Sam is likely to overpay for the acquisition</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>ChatGPT could easily become a tool for censorship and surveillance &mdash; either by the current administration or a future one.</li>
</ul>
We&rsquo;ll see what shakes out in the weeks and months ahead. Presumably someone in the White House took notice of this torches-and-pitchforks moment as it unfolded over the last 24 hours.
<img class="aligncenter" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/vha3zb1lo47k/5TysVQZKz70jCJGiMSWEKQ/f2e81858791d7c4865849e7571ac2aee/fmf_trumpMeme.png" alt="Trump Meme" />
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-2_2x-new.png 2x" alt="2" width="37" />FAA Grounds Airline Stocks
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Airline stocks are taking a hit now that the &ldquo;partial government shutdown&rdquo; is about to curb the number of planes in the sky.
As we mentioned on Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was threatening &ldquo;mass cancellations&rdquo; of flights if air traffic controllers continued to call in sick while they&rsquo;re not getting paid.
Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration made it official. Flight capacity at the nation&rsquo;s 40 biggest airports will be cut by 10% over the next few days. The details aren&rsquo;t yet public but according to the Reuters newswire the most likely scenario is a 4% cut tomorrow, gradually ramping up to 10% by next week.
At last check, American Airlines is down 2.9% on the day and United Airlines 2%. Delta and Southwest are holding up somewhat better, both down about 1.5%.
➢ Shutdown update: We might have to recalibrate our call that the shutdown would be over by the end of this week. According to the Axios site, Capitol Hill Democrats are strategizing today &mdash; and Connecticut&rsquo;s Chris Murphy is among nine Dem senators urging their colleagues to continue holding out.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Actually, Delta and Southwest are doing no worse than your typical Nasdaq stock today.
Yesterday&rsquo;s mild rally had no staying power. As we write the Nasdaq is down 1.4% from yesterday&rsquo;s close and the S&amp;P 500 is down nearly 0.9% to 6,738. For perspective, 6,738 was a record high only a month ago &mdash; but it&rsquo;s down 2.2% from just last week.
&ldquo;I'm still expecting a melt-up -- but I don't want to be early on betting on a turnaround!&rdquo; Greg Guenthner writes his Trading Desk readers. &ldquo;We'll let the charts guide us.&rdquo;
Precious metals are digesting their gains from earlier this week &mdash; gold at $3,976 and silver at $47.82. Crude is sinking further below $60, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate now $59.25.
Crypto can&rsquo;t catch a break. Bitcoin is hanging out at $101,545 while Ethereum has sunk below $3,300.
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-3_2x-new.png 2x" alt="3" width="37" />Tariff Refunds
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />It&rsquo;s the day after the Supreme Court hearing that might end up with the justices nixing the Trump tariff regime &mdash; at least in its present form.
As mentioned here yesterday, both conservatives and liberals piled on Solicitor General John Sauer as he made his case for the Trump administration.
&ldquo;You want to say that tariffs are not taxes, but that&rsquo;s exactly what they are,&rdquo; said liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor. As we learned in school, new taxes must originate in the House of Representatives.
Conservative Neil Gorsuch posed an eye-opening hypothetical under a Democratic administration &mdash; citing the language of the law the Trump White House is leaning on.
&ldquo;Could the president impose a 50% tariff on gas-powered cars and auto parts to deal with the &lsquo;unusual and extraordinary threat&rsquo; from abroad of climate change?&rdquo;
In so many words, Sauer sheepishly said yes.
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" /><a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/tariffs-on-trial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">As mentioned here two months ago</a>, there&rsquo;s now a distinct possibility the federal government would have to issue refunds for tariffs already collected.
And that&rsquo;s not chump change: Uncle Sam&rsquo;s tariff revenue in fiscal year 2025 &mdash; including eight full months of the Trump administration &mdash; totaled $195 billion. That&rsquo;s a substantial rise from fiscal 2024&rsquo;s total of $77 billion.
But the story is a bit more complex than that &mdash; as our Jim Rickards wrote his Strategic Intelligence readers recently.
&ldquo;If the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Trump did not have the legal authority he claimed to impose tariffs, then the court might impose remedies, including a refund of tariffs collected.
&ldquo;However, it is also possible the Supreme Court could hold that Trump lacked legal authority but then returns the case to a lower court for the determination of remedies, which could include refunds&hellip;
&ldquo;If the court decides Trump acted illegally, it is likely that Trump will quickly turn to another statute for authority and keep the tariffs collected on the basis of such other statute. That could result in further litigation over the alternative authority.
&ldquo;In all cases, Trump&rsquo;s team will hold onto the tariffs until all legal theories are exhausted. Trump is likely to win in the long run on one theory or another.
&ldquo;Therefore, it seems likely the tariffs will never be refunded.&rdquo;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-4_2x-new.png 2x" alt="4" width="37" />Follow-Up: Pennies&hellip; and the Cash Economy
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />Intriguing: The owner of 25 Burger King franchises in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio figures that 60% of his customers pay in cash.
This tidbit turns up in today&rsquo;s Wall Street Journal &mdash; which is picking up our theme from earlier this week about the developing penny shortage.
By order of the Trump administration, penny production at the U.S. Mint ended last May. A shortage that wasn&rsquo;t expected to develop until next year is here now. A Baltimore-area Burger King operator is asking employees to pick up rolls of pennies anytime they go to the bank &mdash; seeing as the franchisee&rsquo;s amored-car operator is no longer delivering them.
But the bit about 60% of BK customers paying cash &mdash; at least for one small string of Midwestern franchises &mdash; is an eye-opener.
So we dug into some Federal Reserve figures: Cash was used for about 26% of all payments in the pre-pandemic year of 2019. By 2023&ndash;24, that figure had fallen to 16%.
Cash remains popular among the 55-and-over set&hellip; among low-income households&hellip; and for small-value purchases (under $25). A 2024 Fed report suggests the decline in cash use might have reached a &ldquo;floor&rdquo; for the time being.
Cash still has the advantage of privacy in a way digital payments do not. Earlier this year we mused over how the Trump administration might have reason <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/what-if-trump-breaks-this-promise" target="_blank" rel="noopener">to do away with cash</a>. We&rsquo;ll have an update on the theme either tomorrow or next week&hellip;
<img src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5-new.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/bullet-5_2x-new.png 2x" alt="5" width="37" />Mailbag: Mamdani, Gold, Planned Obsolesence
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Thank you for calling the moment honestly around <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/whos-afraid-of-zohran-mamdani" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mamdani&rsquo;s election</a>,&rdquo; an appreciative reader writes. &ldquo;You cut through all the emotional noise and put your finger on the real issue: &lsquo;the decades-long dispossession of the middle and working classes by connected elites.&rsquo;
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the heart of what&rsquo;s driving so much frustration in this country. The &lsquo;taking game&rsquo; has been running for a long time &mdash; wealth and power extracted upward with the full participation of the political class &mdash; while everyday Americans are told to fight each other over scraps. You&rsquo;re one of the few willing to name the dynamic directly rather than get lost in the partisan theatrics designed to distract from the truth.
&ldquo;I appreciate your clear-eyed analysis. It helps people see the game that is actually being played.&rdquo;
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;Interesting graph of central bank gold purchases and interesting commentary,&rdquo; writes a Strategic Intelligence subscriber after <a href="https://paradigmpressroom.com/post/57-days" target="_blank" rel="noopener">yesterday&rsquo;s edition</a>.
&ldquo;One additional thing to point out though. While the tonnage of gold purchased by the banks has gone down (maybe by 20% if the year ends at 850 metric tons?), by another measure (U.S. dollars spent by central banks on gold), I wonder if gold purchases actually increased.&nbsp;
&ldquo;With the higher U.S. dollar prices of gold in 2025, it would take more money for the central banks to buy the same amount of gold. If the amount of money that a central bank has for buying gold stays the same, then, at a higher price, they must buy less.
&ldquo;Love the 5!&rdquo;
Dave responds: Undoubtedly true. That&rsquo;s why the tonnage totals might well have topped out for now. But in no way does it suggest the central bank gold-buying spree is over!
<img class="infinity-bullet" src="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left.png" srcset="https://media.paradigmpressgroup.com/fmf-assets/Paradigm_Logomark_left_2x.png 2x" align="left" />&ldquo;I believe refrigerators were made to fail after about six years due to energy requirement changes here in the U.S.,&rdquo; a reader observes. &ldquo;The motors and compressors struggle.&rdquo;
(See, this all started the other day with an item about Samsung &ldquo;smart&rdquo; fridges serving up ads on their touchscreens. But since then it&rsquo;s touched a nerve about the durability of major appliances.)
&ldquo;Further, these appliances are nearly all made overseas. LG is Korean and HUGE washer, dryer and refrigerator maker. All inferior to previously made U.S. brands. Bah humbug.&rdquo;
Dave: Yeah, and don&rsquo;t get me started on the built-in icemakers, whose lifespans seem inevitably shorter than those of the main unit. Here in our household, the icemaker in our circa-2012 Maytag model hasn&rsquo;t worked for years &mdash; but we can&rsquo;t justify the cost of either repair or replacement.
We could, however, justify the cost of a modest countertop icemaker. Hopefully, it&rsquo;s not one more item for the scrap heap in a few more years, right?

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